Configuration Information [Manually overridden, the bug happened a while ago]:
Machine: i386 (32-bit), also occurs on amd64 (64 bit)
OS: freebsd12.3-RELEASE-p6
Compiler: cc
Compilation CFLAGS: unknown, from a pre-built FreeBSD package
uname output: FreeBSD house.lr.los-gatos.ca.us 12.3-RELEASE-p6 FreeBSD
12.3-RELEASE-p6 GENERIC i386
Machine Type: i386 (exact same problem occurs on a separate amd64 machine, same
OS version)
Bash Version: 5.2
Patch Level: 3
Release Status: release
Description:
Applies to bash 5.2_3. Problem did not exist on 5.1_16. Problem
observed on FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE-p6, on both architectures i386 and
amd64. Problem started after upgrading bash. Using packages, not built
from ports.
Bash crashes with a segfault, unless the variable LC_CTYPE or LC_ALL
are set to a valid value (I have tried C, C.UTF-8, and en_US.UTF-8),
before any "other" commands are executed. So it works if you start it
as "LC_CTPYE=C /usr/local/bin/bash", or it works if you have
"LC_CTPYE=C" as the first executed line of .bashrc (and exactly
equivalent with LC_ALL). By "first executed line" I mean the first
first non-comment line.
If LC_CTYPE is set to a syntactically valid but non-existing locale
(for example "C.XXX-8" instead of UTF), and that setting is not an
environment variable set when bash starts, but happens in the first
line of .bashrc, then bash first prints an error message (and then
segfaults): bash: warning: setlocale: LC_CTYPE: cannot change locale
(C.XXX-8): Invalid argument
What's the impact of this? If a system has users who use bash as their
login shell, they become locked out. And in a fashion that's hard to
debug, since the only indication that is left is an error message in
/var/log/auth.log.
More discussion can be found in the FreeBSD forum, with some traces that
user _martin collected, can be found in here:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/bash-is-broken-after-upgrade-to-5-2_3.86938/
Repeat-By:
See above
Fix:
Temporary workaround: Add LC_CTYPE=... (something valid) as the first
line of .bashrc for all users.
Problem no longer exists in bash 5.2-15 running on FreeBSD 13.2, but I
don't know where it was fixed.
