Description of Problem: Everything install (RH 7.1), all updates applied. mc is quirky. No problems as root, but for local users shell commands (bash) frequently hang mc, or mc even refuses to start up at all. No filesystem errors, no quota set, 300 MB free disk space. Maybe this is a problem with the new glibc? Possibly a package rebuild against the new glibc solves the problem? Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): mc-4.5.51-32 bash-2.04-21 glibc-2.2.4-24 kernel-2.4.9-34 (i686) How Reproducible: Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start mc as normal user (everything install + all updates) 2. If mc starts up at all, run some shell commands 3. Actual Results: mc refuses to start up, or hangs when running shell commands as normal user. No problems as root. Expected Results: Being able to use shell commands in mc Additional Information:
Some digging rendered the following result: The problem seems to be an incompatibilty with util-linux-2.11f-17. If I downgrade util-linux to 2-10s-12 the problem dissapears. Note that the problem does not always appear for each user, and when it appears it takes different forms: either mc hangs when running shell commands or after pressing ^o a couple of times, or mc refuses to start up at all. In either case mc has to be killed using kill <pid>. It's nice this issue might be fixed in Rawhide (see bug #57538), but maybe it is a good idea to release an upgraded util-linux package for 7.1? No need to upgrade to Rawhide due to a broken update is it?
The only solution seems to be upgrading to RH 7.3's mc-4.5.55-5 (and dev-3.3-4) (or downgrading util-linux to 2.10s-12). Upgrading to util-linux-2.11n-12 didn't make a difference, nor recompiling mc on the updated system. Very weird util-linux seems to break these versions of mc (4.5.51-32 & -36) on RH 7.1, but updating util-linux doesn't solve anything. By the way, what happened to mcserv and gmc in 7.3?
I guess this is a util-linux issue?
While I'm not denying the effects you saw by changing util-linux versions, I don't see how util-linux is involved.
I don't know how exactly this problem relates to util-linux, but fact of the matter is that it's the upgrade to util-linux-2-11f-17 (or 2-11n-12 for that matter) that breaks mc. Downdating util-linux to 2-10s-12 and leaving all the other updates in place makes the problem with mc dissappear. So maybe after all it is a bug in mc, but for sure it is somehow related to util-linux. Now you tell me why ;). I haven't been able to figure it out in the last few days, and mind you, I've spend some time investigating this bugger. Maybe I'll look in to it a little more.
*** Bug 69321 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
/bin/login seems to be the culprit: # rpm -q util-linux util-linux-2-10s-12 # cp /bin/login /bin/login.000 # rpm -Uv util-linux-2-11f-17 # mv /bin/login /bin/login.001 # cp /bin/login.000 /bin/login Now the problem does not occur.
OK, perhaps mc is broken for invoking /bin/login - it should probably just run the shell, yuk. At least I know where the problem is, thanks!
You're welcome :-). Note that the problem does not exist any more in mc-4.5.55-5 (7.1 + updates + dev-3.3-4 + mc-4.5.55-5 works fine).
oh, this means I can ignore the bug because rawhide fixes it! :) This probably isn't an issue that we'd release an erratum for, and since it sounds to be fixed by the mc in rawhide (and indeed the one in 7.3), there shouldn't be any problems left to resolve I hope.
Hm. I don't know about Red Hat's policy about supporting older releases, but it seems a bit strange that you have a bug fix that creates a new problem and there is not even an announcement on how to solve it. But hey, that's for you to decide about ;). By the way, changing this back to mc if that is still possible. Leaves me with the unanswered question what happened to gmc & mcserv...