Bug 13182

Summary: ftpwho "ps" command broken in wu-ftpd updates
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Gilbert E. Detillieux <gedetil>
Component: wu-ftpdAssignee: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: 6.2   
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OS: Linux   
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Last Closed: 2000-08-08 22:44:26 UTC Type: ---
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proposed ftpwho patch that won't break none

Description Gilbert E. Detillieux 2000-06-28 15:43:53 UTC
Since the switch from "build" to "configure", the ftpwho patch for the "ps"
command no longer works for all Red Hat versions, but only for pre-6.0
versions:

Red Hat 5.2:
# strings /usr/bin/ftpwho |fgrep /ps
/bin/ps -f -p %d

Red Hat 6.x:
# strings /usr/bin/ftpwho |fgrep /ps
/bin/ps %d

It would appear that SVR4 is not defined by "configure" for 6.x systems, so
the change made by wu-ftpd-2.6.0-ftpwho.patch has no effect.  The patch
should be revised to include the same change in the else clause.

Furthermore, in the switch to "configure", the "--enable-ls" option was
used. According to Lundberg et al, on the wu-ftpd.edu list,
the internal ls support is still very buggy, and should not be used.

Comment 1 Gilbert E. Detillieux 2000-06-28 16:55:02 UTC
Created attachment 803 [details]
proposed ftpwho patch that won't break

Comment 2 Gilbert E. Detillieux 2000-06-28 17:04:59 UTC
I take back what I said about ftpwho working for pre-6.0 versions.  The "/bin/ps
-f -p" command doesn't work in pre-6.0 versions, as was previously pointed out
in bug #4718. That's why the Red Hat ftpwho patch defined that funny macro,
which would sometimes get ignored on updates (as appears to have happened
again).

Hence, I propose the alternative patch, which I attached above.  It uses a
consistent set of "ps" options, which seem to work and give reasonable output,
for all supported Red Hat Linux releases.

Comment 3 Pekka Savola 2000-08-08 11:11:51 UTC
This has been fixed in mainstream wu-ftpd 2.6.1 (Checked pinstripe 2.6.1-5).


Comment 4 Gilbert E. Detillieux 2000-08-08 22:44:24 UTC
No it hasn't.  The "mainstream" wu-ftpd 2.6.1 incorporated the faulty ftpwho
patch into the code, but as I've already pointed out above, this doesn't work
correctly anymore. Furthermore, its reliance on the bogus
LINUX_BUT_NOT_REDHAT_6_0 macro is very problematic, (also) as pointed out above.

What's more, the new 2.6.1-5 package in the pinstripe beta still uses the
"configure" command to build, and uses the "--enable-ls" option on it, both of
which are being actively discouraged by the wu-ftpd developers.
(See also bug # 13492.)

So, as far as I can tell, NOTHING out of what I described above has been fixed.

Comment 5 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-08-09 10:04:33 UTC
Actually I'm one of the maintainers of wu-ftpd.
./configure is the preferred way of building it on linux and FreeBSD, it's being
discouraged as experimental for other platforms only, primarily because we don't
have access to machines running other OSes, so we can't see for sure what needs
to be checked for and even if we have come up with a check, we can't verify
whether or not it works.

On Linux, ./configure is the way to go because it can detect the differences
between different versions of glibc. Using ./build lnx on glibc 2.1 or 2.2 is
stupid because it leads to duplicated code (stuff from support/ being built
despite the fact that the new glibc versions have the functionality).

The internal ls implementation works well here, but you're probably right about
the fact that we shouldn't use an experimental feature; I've disabled it in
2.6.1-6.

ftpwho works for me...

[root@ftp root]# ftpwho
Service class all:
32560 ?      SN     0:00  ftpd: localhost.localdomain: bero: IDLE
    -   1 users (no maximum)