[grsec] Fwd: Re: Bug#336461: debhelper: dh_fixperms - xargs: chown: Argument list too long

[Bernd Zeimetz]

Hi.

> not accounted for in the environment. i thought of a quick workaround,
> i'd appreciate if you gave it a try (patch might be whitespace damaged):

I've applied the patch - here're the results:

> Please note two things:
> * There is a huge gap of more than 4KB between
>  (getconf ARG_MAX)-(printenv | wc -m) (equals 129968) and the really
>  usable number of arguments (about 125860).

this looks much better now. xargs works again in the case I had the problem 
with it originally.
From the source of xargs:

  /* IEE Std 1003.1, 2003 specifies that the combined argument and
   * environment list shall not exceed {ARG_MAX}-2048 bytes.  It also
   * specifies that it shall be at least LINE_MAX.
   */

and they take care of that rule. So I think your workaround should fix it, or 
did I calc something wrong!?


back to the test program from Andres Metzler - 
one:/tmp# echo $((`getconf ARG_MAX`-`printenv | wc -m`))
130124

for $((`getconf ARG_MAX`-`printenv | wc -m` -15 )) it seems to work reliable 
now.

one:/tmp# for i in `seq -w 1 1000` ;do ./testexec 130109 || break ;done; echo 
$i
1000
one:/tmp# for i in `seq -w 1 1000` ;do ./testexec 130109 || break ;done; echo 
$i
1000
[....]


Thanks a lot for the patch, please let me know if you're going to 
change/test/patch anything else related to this problem.


Bernd