man-db: mandb dies with "input in flex scanner failed"

[Debian Bug Importer]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #261241 http://bugs.debian.org/261241

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #261241 http://bugs.debian.org/261241

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <email address hidden>
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 15:21:28 +0200
From: Dimitry Andric <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: man-db: mandb dies with "input in flex scanner failed"

Package: man-db
Version: 2.3.20-18.woody.4
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

- -- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux springbank.echomania.com 2.4.26-springbank0.0 #1 Sat May 15 01:53:01 CEST 2004 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages man-db depends on:
ii bsdmainutils 5.20020211-4.99 More utilities from FreeBSD.
ii debconf 1.4.25 Debian configuration management sy
ii dpkg 1.10.21 Package maintenance system for Deb
ii groff 1.17.2-15.woody.1 GNU troff text-formatting system
ii groff-base 1.17.2-15.woody.1 GNU troff text-formatting system (
ii libc6 2.2.5-11.5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libdb2 2:2.7.7.0-7 The Berkeley database routines (ru

I got some mail from cron, specifying that cron.daily/man-db failed.
It turns out to die on the following line:

    start-stop-daemon --start --pidfile /dev/null \
        --startas /usr/lib/man-db/mandb --oknodo --chuid man \
        -- --no-purge >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

When I run this mandb command by hand, using:

sudo -u man mandb

I get the following output:

Purging old database entries in /usr/share/man...
mandb: can't update index cache /var/cache/man/index.bt: No such file or directory
Processing manual pages under /usr/share/man...
fopen: No such file or directory
Updating index cache for path `/usr/share/man'. Wait...input in flex scanner failed

Running this under strace as follows:

sudo -u man strace -f -o /tmp/mandb.strace mandb > mandb.out 2>&1

gives the following output (last few lines only, if you really want it
I can post the full log somewhere, about 10MiB):

4983 open("/tmp/zmanIzFQx2", O_RDONLY) = 7
4983 fstat64(7, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0600, st_size=2827, ...}) = 0
4983 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40015000
4983 read(7, ".TH mysqlaccess 1 \"19 December 2"..., 4096) = 2827
4983 close(7) = 0
4983 munmap(0x40015000, 4096) = 0
4983 open("/tmp/zmanIzFQx2", O_RDONLY) = 7
4983 fstat64(7, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0600, st_size=2827, ...}) = 0
4983 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40015000
4983 read(7, ".TH mysqlaccess 1 \"19 December 2"..., 4096) = 2827
4983 read(7, "", 4096) = 0
4983 read(7, "", 4096) = 0
4983 close(7) = 0
4983 munmap(0x40015000, 4096) = 0
4983 close(6) = 0
4983 rmdir("/tmp/zmanIzFQx2") = -1 ENOTDIR (Not a directory)
4983 unlink("/tmp/zmanIzFQx2") = 0
4983 lstat64("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
4983 lstat64("/usr", {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0...

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:21:28PM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> Package: man-db
> Version: 2.3.20-18.woody.4
> Severity: grave
> Justification: renders package unusable

You can still use man, even if in 2.3.20 it was a bit painful without an
up-to-date database, so I don't think it renders the package unusable.
Anyway ...

> Purging old database entries in /usr/share/man...
> mandb: can't update index cache /var/cache/man/index.bt: No such file or directory
> Processing manual pages under /usr/share/man...
> fopen: No such file or directory
> Updating index cache for path `/usr/share/man'. Wait...input in flex scanner failed
[...]
> 4983 lstat64("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
> 4983 readlink("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", ".", 4096) = 1
> 4983 brk(0x8093000) = 0x8093000
> 4983 open("/usr/share/man/man1", O_RDONLY) = 6
> 4983 fstat64(6, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=32768, ...}) = 0
> 4983 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40015000
> 4983 read(6, 0x40015000, 4096) = -1 EISDIR (Is a directory)
[...]
> As you can see, the flex scanner tries to open and read a *directory*,
> for some unknown reason. Any idea what might cause this?

If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
again.

I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

        o Directories found in strange places in manual hierarchies don't
          crash mandb.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [<email address hidden>]

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Report is against woody; the version in sarge/sid/warty deals with this much
more gracefully, and in any case a workaround is available on woody (namely, fix
the broken symlink). Not something we need to worry about.

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 16:51:48 +0100
From: Colin Watson <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#261241: man-db: mandb dies with "input in flex scanner failed"

On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:21:28PM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> Package: man-db
> Version: 2.3.20-18.woody.4
> Severity: grave
> Justification: renders package unusable

You can still use man, even if in 2.3.20 it was a bit painful without an
up-to-date database, so I don't think it renders the package unusable.
Anyway ...

> Purging old database entries in /usr/share/man...
> mandb: can't update index cache /var/cache/man/index.bt: No such file or directory
> Processing manual pages under /usr/share/man...
> fopen: No such file or directory
> Updating index cache for path `/usr/share/man'. Wait...input in flex scanner failed
[...]
> 4983 lstat64("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
> 4983 readlink("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", ".", 4096) = 1
> 4983 brk(0x8093000) = 0x8093000
> 4983 open("/usr/share/man/man1", O_RDONLY) = 6
> 4983 fstat64(6, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0755, st_size=32768, ...}) = 0
> 4983 old_mmap(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40015000
> 4983 read(6, 0x40015000, 4096) = -1 EISDIR (Is a directory)
[...]
> As you can see, the flex scanner tries to open and read a *directory*,
> for some unknown reason. Any idea what might cause this?

If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
again.

I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

        o Directories found in strange places in manual hierarchies don't
          crash mandb.

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [<email address hidden>]

[Dimitry Andric (dimitry-andric)]

On 2004-07-24 at 18:03:15 Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:21:28PM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
>> Package: man-db
>> Version: 2.3.20-18.woody.4
>> Severity: grave
>> Justification: renders package unusable

> You can still use man, even if in 2.3.20 it was a bit painful without an
> up-to-date database, so I don't think it renders the package unusable.

Well, the 'unusable' applied to man-db in this case, not to man
itself. :) I didn't mean to be pedantic, my apologies if this was how
it looked.

>> 4983 lstat64("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz",
>> {st_mode=S_IFLNK|0777, st_size=1, ...}) = 0
>> 4983 readlink("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", ".", 4096) = 1
>> 4983 brk(0x8093000) = 0x8093000
>> 4983 open("/usr/share/man/man1", O_RDONLY) = 6

> If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
> mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
> try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
> again.

Ah! I completely missed this, thanks. Note that this symlink was
obviously caused by the just-released libapache-mod-ssl security fix
for DSA-532-1. Maybe there's something wrong in that package, I'll
check it out and possibly report something to its maintainer.

Anyway, removing the link indeed fixes the problem. Thanks!

> I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
> encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

Okay, but this fix probably won't make it into woody? :)

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:24:37 +0200
From: Dimitry Andric <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#261241 acknowledged by developer (Re: Bug#261241: man-db: mandb dies with "input in
 flex scanner failed")

------------C733C27D2A4E
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On 2004-07-24 at 18:03:15 Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 24, 2004 at 03:21:28PM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
>> Package: man-db
>> Version: 2.3.20-18.woody.4
>> Severity: grave
>> Justification: renders package unusable

> You can still use man, even if in 2.3.20 it was a bit painful without an
> up-to-date database, so I don't think it renders the package unusable.

Well, the 'unusable' applied to man-db in this case, not to man
itself. :) I didn't mean to be pedantic, my apologies if this was how
it looked.

>> 4983 lstat64("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz",
>> {st_mode=3DS_IFLNK|0777, st_size=3D1, ...}) =3D 0
>> 4983 readlink("/usr/share/man/man1/mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz", ".", 4096) =
=3D 1
>> 4983 brk(0x8093000) =3D 0x8093000
>> 4983 open("/usr/share/man/man1", O_RDONLY) =3D 6

> If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
> mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
> try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
> again.

Ah! I completely missed this, thanks. Note that this symlink was
obviously caused by the just-released libapache-mod-ssl security fix
for DSA-532-1. Maybe there's something wrong in that package, I'll
check it out and possibly report something to its maintainer.

Anyway, removing the link indeed fixes the problem. Thanks!

> I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
> encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

Okay, but this fix probably won't make it into woody? :)

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[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 01:24:37AM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> On 2004-07-24 at 18:03:15 Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> > If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
> > mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
> > try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
> > again.
>
> Ah! I completely missed this, thanks. Note that this symlink was
> obviously caused by the just-released libapache-mod-ssl security fix
> for DSA-532-1. Maybe there's something wrong in that package, I'll
> check it out and possibly report something to its maintainer.

Please do report a bug (or reopen+reassign+downgrade this one) if that
symlink's in a package, yes.

> > I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
> > encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:
>
> Okay, but this fix probably won't make it into woody? :)

Indeed. Working hard on sarge, though ...

(Mind you, the patch is fairly straightforward. Attached, although I've
no idea offhand how well it would apply to 2.3.20.)

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [<email address hidden>]

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 02:38:13 +0100
From: Colin Watson <email address hidden>
To: Dimitry Andric <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#261241: acknowledged by developer (Re: Bug#261241: man-db: mandb dies with "input
 in flex scanner failed")

--IS0zKkzwUGydFO0o
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline

On Sun, Jul 25, 2004 at 01:24:37AM +0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:
> On 2004-07-24 at 18:03:15 Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> > If you look closely at the snippet above, you'll see that
> > mod-ssl-makecert.1.gz is a symlink to ., so mandb opens the directory to
> > try to read the man page. Fix that broken symlink and mandb should work
> > again.
>
> Ah! I completely missed this, thanks. Note that this symlink was
> obviously caused by the just-released libapache-mod-ssl security fix
> for DSA-532-1. Maybe there's something wrong in that package, I'll
> check it out and possibly report something to its maintainer.

Please do report a bug (or reopen+reassign+downgrade this one) if that
symlink's in a package, yes.

> > I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
> > encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:
>
> Okay, but this fix probably won't make it into woody? :)

Indeed. Working hard on sarge, though ...

(Mind you, the patch is fairly straightforward. Attached, although I've
no idea offhand how well it would apply to 2.3.20.)

Cheers,

--
Colin Watson [<email address hidden>]

--IS0zKkzwUGydFO0o
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=diff

---------------------
PatchSet 381
Date: 2003/08/16 14:08:04
Author: cjwatson
Branch: HEAD
Tag: (none)
Log:
* src/lexgrog.l (find_name): Report a sensible error if file is a
  directory.

Members:
 docs/ChangeLog:1.374->1.375
 src/lexgrog.l:1.34->1.35

Index: man-db/docs/ChangeLog
diff -u man-db/docs/ChangeLog:1.374 man-db/docs/ChangeLog:1.375
--- man-db/docs/ChangeLog:1.374 Fri Aug 15 17:11:22 2003
+++ man-db/docs/ChangeLog Sat Aug 16 13:08:04 2003
@@ -1,3 +1,8 @@
+Sat Aug 16 14:07:46 BST 2003 Colin Watson <email address hidden>
+
+ * src/lexgrog.l (find_name): Report a sensible error if file is a
+ directory.
+
 Fri Aug 15 18:11:06 BST 2003 Colin Watson <email address hidden>

  * src/check_mandirs.c (test_manfile): file is const.
Index: man-db/src/lexgrog.l
diff -u man-db/src/lexgrog.l:1.34 man-db/src/lexgrog.l:1.35
--- man-db/src/lexgrog.l:1.34 Fri Aug 15 17:05:57 2003
+++ man-db/src/lexgrog.l Sat Aug 16 13:08:04 2003
@@ -381,14 +381,29 @@
   yyin = fdopen (dup (0), "r");
  } else {
 #ifdef COMP_SRC
+ struct compression *comp;
+#endif /* COMP_SRC */
+ struct stat st;
+
+ if (stat (file, &st)) {
+ error (0, errno, "%s", file);
+ return 0;
+ }
+
+ if (S_ISDIR (st.st_mode)) {
+ error (0, EISDIR, "%s", file);
+ return 0;
+ }
+
+#ifdef COMP_SRC
   /* See if we need to decompress the file(s) first. */
- struct compression *comp = comp_info (file);
+ comp = comp_info (file);
   if (comp) {
    file = decompress (file, comp);
    if (!file)
     return 0;
...

[Dimitry Andric (dimitry-andric)]

On 2004-07-25 at 03:38:13 Colin Watson wrote:

>> > I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
>> > encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

> (Mind you, the patch is fairly straightforward. Attached, although I've
> no idea offhand how well it would apply to 2.3.20.)

Here's a modified patch, which should apply cleanly to man-db
2.3.20-18.woody.4. I've built, installed and tested a custom deb with
it, which complains nicely about symlinks to dirs, but doesn't die:

$ sudo -u man mandb
Purging old database entries in /usr/share/man...
[...]
mandb: /usr/share/man/man1: Is a directory
mandb: warning: /usr/share/man/man1: whatis parse for mod-ssl-makecert(1) failed
[...]

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 16:56:49 +0200
From: Dimitry Andric <email address hidden>
To: Colin Watson <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: Bug#261241: acknowledged by developer (Re: Bug#261241: man-db: mandb dies with "input
 in flex scanner failed")

------------31EA10D2F3B2E44
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------------97AA73623F5A
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On 2004-07-25 at 03:38:13 Colin Watson wrote:

>> > I fixed the general misbehaviour in mandb when it unexpectedly
>> > encounters a directory in man-db 2.4.2. From the NEWS file:

> (Mind you, the patch is fairly straightforward. Attached, although I've
> no idea offhand how well it would apply to 2.3.20.)

Here's a modified patch, which should apply cleanly to man-db
2.3.20-18.woody.4. I've built, installed and tested a custom deb with
it, which complains nicely about symlinks to dirs, but doesn't die:

$ sudo -u man mandb
Purging old database entries in /usr/share/man...
[...]
mandb: /usr/share/man/man1: Is a directory
mandb: warning: /usr/share/man/man1: whatis parse for mod-ssl-makecert(1) f=
ailed
[...]

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[Daniel Robitaille (robitaille)]

Was fixed in Debian in 2004