Description of problem:

When using open() to read the output of a program and the execution of the
program fails, perl is leaking a filedescriptor.

E.g. look at fd 3 in:

| $ strace perl -e 'open(FH, "/NOT-THERE |"); close FH; waitpid -1,0;'
| ...
| pipe([3, 4])                            = 0
| pipe([5, 6])                            = 0
| fork()                                  = 22128
| close(4)                                = 0
| close(6)                                = 0
| read(5, "\2\0\0\0", 4)                  = 4
| close(5)                                = 0
| wait4(-1, [WIFEXITED(s) && WEXITSTATUS(s) == 1], 0, NULL) = 22128
| --- SIGCHLD (Child exited) ---
| rt_sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK, [], NULL, 8) = 0
| _exit(0)                                = ?

fd 3 will be created by the pipe() syscall but never be closed.

perl-5.8 is closing it automatically and perl-5.0 returns the filedescriptor in
'FH'. But with the shipped perl-5.6.1 there does not exist a way to close it.


IMO this is a very critical bug; it brought down some of my servers running a
perl-based monitoring software.



Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

perl-5.6.1-34.99.6


How reproducible:

100%