First of all, I apologise for the delay. Given what upstream, below, answered, I am closing this bug WONTFIX. Please contact Coreutils upstream at coreut...@gnu.org for more details.
In general, changes to Coreutils code should be submitted upstream. Distro-wise, we very rarely deviate from upstream (and, for Coreutils and many of the Ubuntu packages, from Debian). Cheers, ------ email from upstream ------ Hello, On 2018-12-28 11:21 a.m., C de-Avillez wrote: > We have had some bugs reported recently at our BTS: > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1807295 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1807797 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1808092 > https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1808095 > > They deal with sort, split, fmt, and uniq, respectively, and provide > tentative patches. A summary other mailing-list readers: The "filetype" in question is regular files vs fifo / char devices / block /devices. The four requests all say something like: == "Sort like many other applications does not check for file types of the inputs that are passed in as arguments. [...] For example, sorting files that of type block/character/fifo does not make much sense as it will just hang or use up all cpu cycles. " == > I would like to re-direct the reporters to upstream (i.e., you folks), > but I feel it would be nice to do the redirect with a small blurb of > what upstream thinks about that. First and foremost, I think these are not bugs, and this is perfectly valid behavior. If a user wants to process a non-regular file, they can do so. The reasoning of "wasting" CPU/memory can be just as valid to processing arbitrary large binary files. --- Also, Few observations: 1. These four issues were reported by different people (all new LaunchPad users), during very short time period (second week of december). 2. Three out of the four link to this document, which explains about different file types as part of what looks like a sys-call exerciser: https://github.com/pkmoore/rrapper/blob/master/anomalies/weird_filetypes.md 3. The above document mention but does not explain what "S_IFSOCK" is, and (perhaps as a result) none of their patches deals with S_IFSOCK (despite that everything said about char-devices and fifos applies to sockets as well). 4. Rejecting FIFOs as input indicates the submitters have some lack of familiarity with unix command-line. Given all the above, I suspect this is part of a homework exercise given to students at some college, perhaps something like "find bugs in an free software project and submit a patch to them". While good intentioned, these suggestions should be rejected as "wontfix". For any students or potential contributers who want to start working on GNU coreutils - PLEASE write to coreut...@gnu.org and introduce yourself, and we will easily provide ideas on useful contributions that would be accepted. Of course, the above is just my opinion, and others are welcomed to chime in. regards, - assaf ** Changed in: coreutils (Ubuntu) Status: New => Won't Fix -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to coreutils in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1808095 Title: uniq is not checking and handling all file types Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu: Won't Fix Bug description: Hi, The utility uniq allows all types of files as input. Allowing block devices or character devices as input can lead to unwanted behavior such as the utility executes indefinitely when device '/dev/urandom' is passed as an input. Please refer this for more information regarding this issue (https://github.com/pkmoore/rrapper/blob/master/anomalies/weird_filetypes.md). I've included a patch which checks and handles character devices and block devices when passed as input. I've tested the patched version and it doesn't seem to break any tests but I'm always glad to further work on it. Please get back to me with any feedback or for more information. Regards, Anoop Nadig ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04 Package: coreutils 8.28-1ubuntu1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-42.45-generic 4.15.18 Uname: Linux 4.15.0-42-generic i686 ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.5 Architecture: i386 CurrentDesktop: XFCE Date: Tue Dec 11 20:23:32 2018 ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/uniq InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-11-07 (35 days ago) InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 18.04 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release i386 (20180426) SourcePackage: coreutils UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/coreutils/+bug/1808095/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
