+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #810090 +++

Created attachment 575295 [details]
sos report from the Satellite server

Description of problem:
spacewalk-clone-by-date crashes on RHEL 6 with exception when given -d option


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
spacewalk-utils-1.2.1-16.el6sat

How reproducible:
Everytime

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Login to Satellite server as root
2. Run spacewalk-clone-by-date as:
spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-5 -d 2012-02-17 -u adminuser
  
Actual results:
[root@xxxxxxxx ~]# spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-5 -d 2012-02-17 -u adminuser
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 205, in <module>
    sys.exit(abs(main() or 0))
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 194, in main
    args = parse_args();
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 162, in parse_args
    options.to_date = parse_time(options.to_date)
  File "/usr/bin/spacewalk-clone-by-date", line 175, in parse_time
    if re.match('[0-9]{4}-[0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2}',time_str):
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.6/re.py", line 137, in match
    return _compile(pattern, flags).match(string)
TypeError: expected string or buffer
[root@xxxxxxxx ~]#

Expected results:
Successfully cloned channel

Additional info:

--- Additional comment from Ken Sugawara on 2012-05-07 04:26:42 EDT ---

I realized that there was a missing argument (the name of the cloned channel) in the usage shown above, so I changed the title of this bug accordingly.
spacewalk-clone-by-date should print an error message if

--- Additional comment from Ken Sugawara on 2012-05-07 04:28:59 EDT ---

(continuing from the previous comment; sorry) the usage is incorrect (e.g. missing arguments), instead of crashing and dumping traceback.

--- Additional comment from Dimitar Yordanov on 2012-12-06 05:59:53 EST ---

On one hand the issue described in the "Descriprion" is actually 

 Bug 866930 - spacewalk-clone-by-date without --to_date option produces traceback

On the other hand seems that Python OptionParser parser fails to work reliable with options with more than one argument.
Option "-l" should receive two arguments and in this case it takes the next option string as an argument.

If we take as un example:

  #spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-5 -d 2012-02-17 -u adminuser

the argumetns for option "-l"  are  "rhel-x86_64-server-5"  and "-d".
In this way we run into but Bug 866930 because the "Date" is not defined.

In case we switch the places of options -u and -d we will not longer hit  Bug 866930 but the problem with Python OptionParser.

  #spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-5 -u admin -d 2012-01-01 
  Username not specified


Possible hack-fix: 

    if options.channels:
        for chans in options.channels:
          for chan in chans:
            if re.match('^-',chan):
                raise UserError("Some channel name is missing")

--- Additional comment from Stephen Herr on 2012-12-20 13:57:01 EST ---

Since leaving off a channel will lead either to

1) error: -l option requires 2 arguments

if the -l option is at the end of the command or

2) the behavior described above, where the rest of the options are stuck into the args variable because they can't be interpreted as options

a less hacky fix might be to error if len(args) != 0.

Or we could simply migrate from optparse to argparse, which is incredibly straightforward and works much better. 

I think I'll do the latter.

--- Additional comment from Stephen Herr on 2012-12-20 14:22:30 EST ---

I take back the first part of what I said. It seems there are some cases where optparse will not stick the extra words in the args list and will just consume things it doesn't understand. For example:

spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-6 -d 2012-02-17 -u admin -p <password>

will use "rhel-x86_64-server-6" and "-d" as the two channel labels, and the "2012-02-17" just disappears into thin air. The args list will be empty.

So the only good way to fix this is to migrate from optparse to argparse. Output after migrating:

# spacewalk-clone-by-date -l rhel-x86_64-server-6 -d 2012-02-17 -u admin -p <password>
usage: spacewalk-clone-by-date [-h] [-c CONFIG] [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD]
                               [-s SERVER] [-l CHANNELS CHANNELS]
                               [-b BLACKLIST] [-r REMOVELIST] [-d TO_DATE]
                               [-y] [-m] [-k] [-v] [-g] [-o]
spacewalk-clone-by-date: error: argument -l/--channels: expected 2 argument(s)