Re: Bug in ps -f

Article View: comp.bugs.sys5

Article #880

#880

From: Paul De Bra
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 1988 19:51

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In article <533@levels.sait.edu.au> ccdn@levels.sait.edu.au (DAVID NEWALL) writes:
>I have discovered a bug in System V Unixes.  Under certain circumstances,
>ps -f displays "junk" in the login name field.  This bug exists on our NCR
>...
>        $ ps -f
>            UID   PID  PPID  C           TTY  TIME COMMAND
>        user1234Auser2345Buser3456 14165     1  2 15:54:52   05  0:03 sh
>        user1234Auser2345Buser3456 14166 14165  0 15:54:57   05  0:00 ps -f
>

As far as I know this bug extremely old. The reason some programs show this
bug is that the internal representation of user names is done with an
8-character array. This means that usernames consisting of 8 characters are
not 0-terminated.

We worked around the problem by not allowing login names of more than 7
characters on any of our systems.

Paul.
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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!whuts!mhuxh!mhuxu!mhuxt!mhuxi!mhuhk!mhuxo!ulysses!andante!alice!debra
From: debra@alice.UUCP (Paul De Bra)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Bug in ps -f
Message-ID: <8316@alice.UUCP>
Date: 20 Oct 88 19:51:39 GMT
References: <533@levels.sait.edu.au>
Reply-To: debra@alice.UUCP ()
Organization: University of Antwerp
Lines: 23

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