Bug#199653: Problems with apt, dpkg waiting for gzip

[Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>]

retitle 199653 SIGCHLD being ignored somewhere
reassign 199653 general
thanks

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2002/debian-user-200203/msg03490.html

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/debian-user-200301/msg01498.html

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-spanish/2002/debian-user-spanish-200211/msg01621.html

http://lists.presso.net/pipermail/allug/2002-April/001056.html

All of these seem to describe the same issue.  Some of the other symptoms
include:

- dpkg trying to wait for gzip, and not finding it, in the same way that apt
  does

- Perl complaining "Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default"

It sounds like the process is inheriting a SIG_IGN action for SIGCHLD from
somewhere, though I have no idea where.  There was a problem with cron doing
this, as discussed in this NetBSD bug report:

http://www.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/query-pr-single.pl?number=11778

but as far as I know, none of these instances involve cron, and this is
fixed in Debian cron anyway since version 3.0pl1-43 (long before woody).
Maybe this is a bug in one of the shells?

I am CCing a the folks from debian-user who experienced this behaviour to
find out more about their environment.  If you could answer these questions:

1. What shell are you using when you experience this problem?

2. Run this command in the environment where you experience the problem:

   perl -w -e ""

   Does it produce any output?  Specifically, this message?

     Can't ignore signal CHLD, forcing to default.

-- 
 - mdz