| Summary: | su doesn't print error message when fork () fails | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Product: | [Retired] Red Hat Linux | Reporter: | martin |
| Component: | sh-utils | Assignee: | Cristian Gafton <gafton> |
| Status: | CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | low | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | low | ||
| Version: | 5.2 | CC: | martin |
| Target Milestone: | --- | ||
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | i386 | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | Bug Fix | |
| Doc Text: | Story Points: | --- | |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | 1999-07-29 01:13:18 UTC | Type: | --- |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
This issue has been forwarded to a developer for further action. fixed in sh-utils-1.16-24 and later |
There's a small problem in su (sh-utils 1.16): run_shell () is already run with the target user's identity; when USE_PAM you'll find this code around line 519: child = fork(); if (child == 0) { /* child shell */ This uses a fork () when we already have the identity of the target user and does not catch any errors when this fork fails. The problem occured when trying to su from root to a non-root user which already had the maximum number of possible processes running. Su simply died without doing anything and there was no error message at all. One should change this code to make it at least write an error message to syslog - it is very confusing for root if the su simply fails without printing an error message. Martin