interesting segfault when running awk as pid==1

Michael Tokarev mjt at tls.msk.ru
Fri Jul 6 06:13:58 UTC 2012


On 06.07.2012 04:10, ralda at gmx.de wrote:
> Hi Michael !
> 
>> I've an "interesting" case here, when busybox (in debian)
>> segfaults when run in initramfs as pid == 1, when invoking
>> awk applet (PREFER_APPLETS is set to yes).  I can't trigger
>> it with pid != 1, and since pid=1 is special in linux,
>> I can't really debug it too.
> 
> I hit this problem some years ago. May be same reason. Try running awk
> via env command and setup some environment variables. pid 1 is special
> as environment on invocation may be empty (or something missing, most
> likely SHELL or PATH).

As I stated in my initial email, when running awk from a subshell
it works.  I know PID=1 is special, and for one, it can't be straced
or debugged.  PATH isn't empty since busybox ash sets it to some
value, but PATH at least _should_ be irrelevant, since awk is NOEXEC
applet.  And finally, it isn't a solution to run it from a subshell,
since running awk from within /init in initramfs is a valid usage
case.

Thanks for trying,

/mjt


More information about the busybox mailing list