Bug 453646

Summary:	Compile perl with -DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Lubomir Rintel <lkundrak>
Component:	perl	Assignee:	Marcela Mašláňová <mmaslano>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	9	CC:	kasal, rc040203, robin.norwood, tcallawa
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	perl-5.10.0-30.fc9	Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2008-07-02 09:49:04 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Lubomir Rintel 2008-07-01 17:22:51 UTC

Description of problem:

Perl by default manages to take care of environment with its custom memory
management routines, to work around leaky putenv() implementations. However,
once a module modifies environment, perl loses track and panics upon deallocation.

For an example of a problem caused by this, see perlbug RT ticket #56500 [1],
where Term::ReadLine::Gnu is the module that modifies environment. It is very
likely that there are other such modules.

[1] http://rt.perl.org/rt3/Ticket/Display.html?id=56500

According to putenv(3) manual it is not necessary for perl to deal with possible
putenv() leaks in Fedora 9, since glibc correctly implements it as of 2.1.2.

According to perl's INSTALL file, the problematic behavior can be disabled with
-DPERL_USE_SAFE_PUTENV switch.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

perl-5.10.0-32.fc10.i386

Comment 1 Marcela Mašláňová 2008-07-02 09:49:04 UTC

This will hit also rawhide soon.

Comment 2 Lubomir Rintel 2008-07-02 14:37:32 UTC

Thanks a lot. Just for the record -- apart from Term::ReadLine::Gnu this also
reportedly fixed issues with wxPerl and Class::MethodMaker; in case you are
aware of any bugs open that might relate to this.

Comment 3 Fedora Update System 2008-07-06 06:17:28 UTC

perl-5.10.0-30.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.