Infinite loop with "package file" manifests

[Jeff Johnson]

tracker

[Ville (ville-redhat-bugs)]

$ echo foo > foo
$ rpm -qlp foo

The above causes an apparently infinite loop in rpmq, with no output.

$ echo "bar foo" > foo
$ rpm -qlp foo
error: open of bar failed: No such file or directory
error: open of bar failed: No such file or directory
error: open of bar failed: No such file or directory
[...]

Another infinite loop, this time with output.

I'd expect rpm to detect the loops and break out of them, outputting an error message.

[Jeff (jeff-redhat-bugs)]

Yes, a file that contains its own name will loop forever.

Hint: for extra credit, try the doubly recursive variant
    echo "pong" > ping
    echo "ping" > pong
   rpm -qlp ping

I'm sure you can devise the N+1 failures by induction.

[Jeff (jeff-redhat-bugs)]

Perhaps a progress bar reminescent of the ancient arcade game pong would suffice
to give the user feed back while waiting for memory to be exhausted by rpm. Nah,
that only works with the doubly recursive variant failure mode, and the wit is likely
wasted.

[Jeff (jeff-redhat-bugs)]

And lets not firget this type of recursion either. I too would expect
error messages that are simple, direct, and translated to my specific
locale in every failure instance, including this one:

[jbj@wellfleet rpm]$ cat /etc/rpm/macros.loop
%bing %{bang}
%bang %{boom}
%boom %{bing}

[jbj@wellfleet rpm]$ rpm -qp '%bing'
error: Recursion depth(17) greater than max(16)
 15< (empty)
 14< (empty)
 13< (empty)
 12< (empty)
 11< (empty)
 10< (empty)
  9< (empty)
  8< (empty)
  7< (empty)
  6< (empty)
  5< (empty)
  4< (empty)
  3< (empty)
  2< (empty)
  1< (empty)
  0< (empty)
*** Fstrerror((nil))
error: open of failed: No such file or directory
[jbj@wellfleet rpm]$ rpm --version
rpm (RPM) 5.1.DEVEL

Is that expecting too much? I think not ...

[Jeff (jeff-redhat-bugs)]

Then there are the other variant failures. Note two error messages, that is so so wrong:

jbj@wellfleet wdj51]$ ln -s foo bar
[jbj@wellfleet wdj51]$ ln -s bar foo
[jbj@wellfleet wdj51]$ rpm -qp foo
error: open of foo failed: Too many levels of symbolic links
error: open of foo failed: Too many levels of symbolic links

Shall we move along to named pipes and fifos misbehavior with rpm -qp?

[Jeff (jeff-redhat-bugs)]

And then there is
    [jbj@wellfleet wdj51]$ echo "foo*" > foo
    [jbj@wellfleet wdj51]$ rpm -qp foo
    ^C
that needs to be handled with simple concise error messages.

Don't you hate infinite recursions? I do ...

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[Panu (panu-redhat-bugs)]

Moving to rawhide to avoid timeouting.

[Ľuboš (ubo-redhat-bugs)]

Fixed upstream b2bde386f609145f14fe9c98bba67b9db6e2b4ff.