Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 181809
Infinite chain of unicode_start processes crashes system
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:11:24 EST
Description of problem: Running 'less' on an ordinary file from a VC, no output is shown until ctrl-C is pressed. During this time, a continually growing chain of unicode_start processes is built. If not interrupted, this eventually causes the system to become totally unresponsive, requiring a RESET to recover. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kbd-1.12-13.2 less-394-2.2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Log in on any VC. 2. Run "less /etc/profile" 3. Wait for system to die. (Press Ctrl-C if you don't want that to happen.) Actual results: The system eventually starts thrashing and becomes totally unresponsive. Expected results: The text from /etc/profile should have been displayed. Additional info: This misbehavior does not occur if the environment variable LESSOPEN is unset (defaults to "|/usr/bin/lesspipe.sh %s" in /etc/profile.d/less.sh). The problem does not appear to be affected by LANG settings.
What version of initscripts are you using? And what is the value of $BASH_ENV? Can you provide the first few files generated by (strace -ff -o log less /etc/profile)? Thanks.
Created attachment 124783 [details] Files from "strace -ff -o log less /etc/profile" (tar archive)
initscripts-8.28-1 BASH_ENV=/root/.bashrc which contains: # .bashrc # User specific aliases and functions #alias rm='rm -i' #alias cp='cp -i' #alias mv='mv -i' # Source global definitions if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then . /etc/bashrc fi I've found that eliminating the sourcing of /etc/bashrc makes the problem go away. File /etc/bashrc from initscripts-8.28-1 is unchanged.
OK, this looks like a problem in initscripts, not kbd. File /etc/bashrc sources all the "*.sh" file in /etc/profile.d, and /etc/profile.d/lang.sh causes /etc/bashrc to be sourced again. That's an infinite loop.
Yes, and you are not the first one to hit this: #179949, #172059. The correct fix is to remove setting BASH_ENV from all startup files, which unfortunately cannot be done automatically. Thanks for your report. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 172059 ***