Issue #12012 has been reported by Chris Price.
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Bug #12012: Facter globally overrides LANG environment variable at load time
https://projects.puppetlabs.com/issues/12012
Author: Chris Price
Status: Unreviewed
Priority: Normal
Assignee: Chris Price
Category: library
Target version: 1.7.x
Keywords:
Branch:
Affected Facter version:
In facter.rb, ~ line 41-44, we have this:
# Set LANG to force i18n to C
#
ENV['LANG'] = 'C'
This can cause problems when users try to perform an 'exec' with a program that
responds to this environment variable (see Puppet #11860). However, setting
this variable can be necessary / mandatory for cases where we need to parse the
output of a command to obtain a status or value (which facter clearly does a
LOT of), to ensure that the output of the program is formatted consistently.
Rather than globally modifying this variable we probably need to temporarily
override it when we are about to execute a program whose output we intend to
parse, and then restore the previous value as soon as we've finished executing
the program. In the case of Facter, it appears that most (all?) of this sort
of behavior is funneled through the method Facter::Util::Resolution.exec.
Assuming that is the case, we should be able to remove the global modification
of the environment var from facter.rb and simply override / restore the value
inside of this "exec" method.
There are a few utility methods lying around that appear to be intended for
this sort of scenario (temporarily overriding / restoring environment
variables), but neither of them is currently located in a spot that would make
it amenable for use in resolving this ticket. They are:
facter/spec/unit/util/loader_spec.rb, ~ line 24: method "with_env"; can't
currently use this because it's defined in test code rather than production code
puppet/lib/puppet/util/execution.rb, ~ line 6: method "withenv"; can't use this
from Facter because it's defined in puppet.
Proposals:
1) Copy "withenv" from puppet/util/execution.rb into Facter codebase so that it
can be used by both code trees (should this be a separate ticket?)
2) Refactor loader_spec.rb to use "withenv" from new location
3) Remove redundant "with_env" definition from
facter/spec/unit/util/loader_spec.rb
4) Remove line that sets ENV['LANG'] in facter.rb
5) Refactor Facter::Util::Resolution.exec to use new "withenv" to temporarily
override LANG for the scope of that method
6) Refactor Puppet code to use "withenv" from the Facter code base rather than
from puppet/lib/puppet/util/execution.rb (another separate ticket?)
7) Remove "withenv" from puppet/util/execution.rb so that we are not
maintaining two copies of this functionality
Concerns:
a) How to determine if there are any Facter facts that are executing programs
and parsing their output *without* calling into Facter::Util::Resolution.exec
to accomplish it? Any such facts could potentially be affected by the fact
that they may no longer be running with ENV['LANG'] forced to 'C'.
b) Documentation; customers' custom facts may have been relying on the old
behavior without even realizing it... how do we convey the change to them?
c) (puppet) If we remove "withenv" from puppet/util/execution.rb, are existing
spec tests exhaustive enough to confirm that we've successfully refactored all
of the places in the puppet code that were calling the old version?
d) (puppet) If we remove "withenv" from puppet/util/execution.rb, any concerns
that we will break modules / customer code?
Any comments / input greatly appreciated...
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