dbus_message_iter_open_container called with an invalid signature

[Charbonnier]

Hi!

This is an old bug which generate the this exception:

arguments to dbus_message_iter_open_container() were incorrect, assertion "(type == DBUS_TYPE_STRUCT && contained_signature == NULL) || (type == DBUS_TYPE_DICT_ENTRY && contained_signature == NULL) || (type == DBUS_TYPE_VARIANT && contained_signature != NULL) || (type == DBUS_TYPE_ARRAY && contained_signature != NULL)" failed in file ../../dbus/dbus-message.c line 2727.

This bug has been already reported on sourceforge, but never corrected.
http://sourceforge.net/p/dbus-cplusplus/bugs/5/

However, the solution is simple and already applied on several dbus-c++ forks:
- in the "async" version maintained by sjames at git://gitorious.org/~sjames/dbus-cplusplus/async.git
- Chromium has the same correction. The log associated with the commit is at:
http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/third_party/dbus-cplusplus.git;a=commit;h=32fe2ce6a60f6f9e5771c639598050798a4feae8

Basically, the correction is very simple:

diff --git a/src/message.cpp b/src/message.cpp
index 3f0cac4..7afa49b 100644
--- a/src/message.cpp
+++ b/src/message.cpp
@@ -350,7 +350,7 @@ void MessageIter::copy_data(MessageIter &to)
       (
         (DBusMessageIter *) & (to._iter),
         from.type(),
- from.type() == DBUS_TYPE_VARIANT ? NULL : sig,
+ (from.type() == DBUS_TYPE_STRUCT) || (from.type() == DBUS_TYPE_DICT_ENTRY) ? NULL : sig,
         (DBusMessageIter *) & (to_container._iter)
       );

I would be glad to see this bug corrected in ubuntu.

Best regards,
Bigfoot.

[Charbonnier (charboma38)]

Any way to get this bug fixed? I'm getting bored to compile this lib again and again every 6 months...

[Thomas Uhle (uhle)]

The same bug has been reported at https://sourceforge.net/p/dbus-cplusplus/bugs/20/ too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package dbus-c++ - 0.9.0-11

---------------
dbus-c++ (0.9.0-11) unstable; urgency=medium

  * QA upload.
  * Add 09_fix_build_order_and_linking.patch to change the order in which the
    libraries are built and to fix the underlinking issue. (Closes: #889114)
  * Add 10_prevent_deadlock_on_timeout_expiration.patch to prevent a possible
    deadlock. (Closes: #956114)
  * Add 11_fix_MessageIter__copy_data.patch to fix copying nested types in
    dicts and structs. (LP: #1098723)
  * Add 12_autoconf_update.patch to avoid hard-to-read deprecation warnings
    that clutter the build logs.
  * Update 01_host_name_max.patch because stdio.h is needed by perror().
  * debian/control:
    + Add libdbus-1-dev to libdbus-c++-dev's dependencies. (Closes: #1018771)
    + Fix spelling and capitalization of the package descriptions.
    + Update Homepage to use https URL.
    + Mark libdbus-c++-bin as Multi-Arch: allowed. It fixes a regression since
      version 0.9.0-9.
    + Add Rules-Requires-Root: no.
    + Bump Standards-Version to 4.6.2, no changes needed.
  * debian/copyright:
    + Add Upstream-Contact, information copied from configure.ac.
    + Update packaging copyright according to debian/changelog and
      debian/patches.
  * debian/watch: Use uscan version 4.
  * Add debian/upstream/metadata.

 -- Thomas Uhle <email address hidden> Wed, 22 Feb 2023 22:55:50 +0100