On 25/09/2026 09:03, Collin Funk wrote:
For some reason, lib/canonicalize.c counted the number of links it saw but never used the value beyond ensuring it never went over 20. This causes the infinite loop mentioned in an Ubuntu bug report [1]:ln -s foo/bar foo realpath foo It will take quite a bit of time (as in more than an hour), but if you leave it running, your system will eventually run out of memory due to the allocations used to combine the path components below the modified section. This patch fixes it, by using the condition from lib/canonicalize-lgpl.c. Collin [1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/2161155
Ouch. When merging to coreutils, for the NEWS entry I confirmed the issue was introduced in v9.0. Perhaps a ulimit -v test is warranted also. thanks! Padraig
