Bug 691850

Summary: misprocessing of invalid PID argument for ksh built-in kill
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Reporter: Kevin Logan <kevin.logan>
Component: kshAssignee: Michal Hlavinka <mhlavink>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: qe-baseos-tools-bugs
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 5.4CC: kvolny, mfranc, ovasik, prc
Target Milestone: rc   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: ksh-20100621-1.el5 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
kill builtin did not handle extra large numbers and just reported -1 internally. This value was interpreted as -1 option thus ksh killed all user processes. This updated version has improved handling of pid conversion errors. When too big number is used, it reports error correctly.
 Story Points: ---
Clone Of:
: 701890 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-02-21 05:50:41 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:
Attachments:
Description Flags
patch to fix this none

Description Kevin Logan 2011-03-29 16:27:53 UTC 
Description of problem: When the ksh built-in kill is called with a very large, non-existent PID value, it's treated like -1 (kill all processes owned by the user).

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 20080202-14.el5

How reproducible: Every time

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Start a ksh session
2.Run a command like "kill 11269117401228512356"
  
Actual results:  All processes owned by the user are killed, like the -1 argument would normally do.

Expected results: 
error message - "kill: 11269117401228512356: no such process"

Additional info:  We encountered this when a user was trying to kill a series of processes.  The user mis-entered the process list without separating spaces.
Comment 1 Michal Hlavinka 2011-05-04 08:12:19 UTC 
reproducible
Comment 2 Michal Hlavinka 2011-05-04 08:15:26 UTC 
Created attachment 496723 [details]
patch to fix this
Comment 5 Michal Hlavinka 2012-01-23 14:06:42 UTC 
    Technical note added. If any revisions are required, please edit the "Technical Notes" field
    accordingly. All revisions will be proofread by the Engineering Content Services team.
    
    New Contents:
kill builtin did not handle extra large numbers and just reported -1 internally. This value was interpreted as -1 option thus ksh killed all user processes. This updated version has improved handling of pid conversion errors. When too big number is used, it reports error correctly.
Comment 6 errata-xmlrpc 2012-02-21 05:50:41 UTC 
Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2012-0159.html