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Bug 1063887

Summary: su terminates its parent process upon receiving SIGTERM
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Reporter: Marcel Kolaja <mkolaja>
Component: coreutilsAssignee: Ondrej Oprala <ooprala>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Tomas Dolezal <todoleza>
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: urgent    
Version: 6.5CC: kzak, msaxena, ovasik, psklenar
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: Patch, Regression, ZStream
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: coreutils-8.4-33.el6 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Cause: Fix for #889531 introduced a regression. Consequence: Parent process was killed instead of the su process when SIGTERM signal was received. Fix: Handling of the SIGTERM signal was fixed. Result: Parent process is no longer killed when su gets SIGTERM signal.
Story Points: ---
Clone Of:
: 1111584 (view as bug list) Environment:
Last Closed: 2014-10-14 06:34:23 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1056252, 1111584    
Attachments:
Description Flags
part of the reproducer
none
part of the reproducer
none
part of the reproducer
none
proposed patch none

Description Marcel Kolaja 2014-02-11 15:25:50 UTC
Description of problem:
Let's assume processes listed in this partial output of:

$ ps -Heawww o user,pid,ppid,pgrp,c,stime,tty,time,cmd

root     14874 13214 14874  0 16:49 pts/0    00:00:00         /bin/sh ./quick.sh
root     14875 14874 14874  0 16:49 pts/0    00:00:00           sh /var/tmp/in-between.sh
root     14876 14875 14874  0 16:49 pts/0    00:00:00             su - testuser -c /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 14878 14876 14878  0 16:49 ?        00:00:00               /bin/sh /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 14895 14878 14878  0 16:49 ?        00:00:00                 sleep 30

When 14876 receives SIGTERM, the parent process is terminated.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
coreutils-8.4-31.el6.x86_64

How reproducible:
always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create user testuser
2. deploy the attached scripts in /var/tmp/
3. # cd /var/tmp/
4. # ./quick.sh

Actual results:
[root@el6vm tmp]# ./quick.sh 
start of ./quick.sh
start of /var/tmp/in-between.sh
OPID = 19051
start of /var/tmp/testsleep.sh

Út úno 11 16:08:50 CET 2014
root     19049 19009 19049  0 16:08 pts/0    00:00:00         /bin/sh ./quick.sh
root     19050 19049 19049  0 16:08 pts/0    00:00:00           sh /var/tmp/in-between.sh
root     19051 19050 19049  0 16:08 pts/0    00:00:00             su - testuser -c /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 19053 19051 19053  0 16:08 ?        00:00:00               /bin/sh /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 19070 19053 19053  0 16:08 ?        00:00:00                 sleep 30
killing testsleep.sh

Session terminated, killing shell...after killing testsleep.sh
 ...killed.
Ukončen (SIGTERM)
[root@el6vm tmp]# 

Expected results:
[root@el6vm tmp]# ./quick.sh 
start of ./quick.sh
start of /var/tmp/in-between.sh
OPID = 19096
start of /var/tmp/testsleep.sh

Út úno 11 16:12:02 CET 2014
root     19094 19009 19094  0 16:11 pts/0    00:00:00         /bin/sh ./quick.sh
root     19095 19094 19094  0 16:11 pts/0    00:00:00           sh /var/tmp/in-between.sh
root     19096 19095 19094  0 16:11 pts/0    00:00:00             su - testuser -c /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 19098 19096 19098  0 16:11 ?        00:00:00               /bin/sh /var/tmp/testsleep.sh
testuser 19115 19098 19098  0 16:11 ?        00:00:00                 sleep 30
killing testsleep.sh
after killing testsleep.sh

Session terminated, killing shell... ...killed.

Út úno 11 16:12:05 CET 2014
testuser 19115     1  0 16:11 ?        00:00:00 sleep 30
end of /var/tmp/in-between.sh
end of ./quick.sh
[root@el6vm tmp]# 

Additional info:
This regression has been introduced with fixing bug #889531, which backports this upstream commit:

https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/8960f3ae5f4d72be88ee76e50417785e836b35e8

When kill is called, all processes in the process group receive the caught signal:

https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/commit/8960f3ae5f4d72be88ee76e50417785e836b35e8#diff-57e155f7656f0e8586081c57c729122fR397

As one can see in the output above, su is in the same process group as the parent process, which means that they are sent the caught signal.

Comment 1 Marcel Kolaja 2014-02-11 15:27:06 UTC
Created attachment 861812 [details]
part of the reproducer

Comment 2 Marcel Kolaja 2014-02-11 15:27:35 UTC
Created attachment 861813 [details]
part of the reproducer

Comment 3 Marcel Kolaja 2014-02-11 15:28:07 UTC
Created attachment 861815 [details]
part of the reproducer

Comment 5 Marcel Kolaja 2014-02-11 16:59:25 UTC
Created attachment 861885 [details]
proposed patch

Killing getpid() instead 0 fixes the issue and doesn't seem to reintroduce bug #889531. Thanks Karel Zak for the hint! Please, note that this issue seems to be present in upstream too.

Comment 7 Karel Zak 2014-02-17 14:28:55 UTC
Note that the util-linux upstream has been fixed by commit 270ab78a0c84a0d580d3dfa257813abbba385687.

Comment 19 errata-xmlrpc 2014-10-14 06:34:23 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-2014-1457.html