Debian Bug report logs - #497540
bash-completion: killall completion uses command with arguments instead of command name

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Fabian Bieler <der.fabe@gmx.net>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>

Subject: bash-completion: killall completion uses command with arguments instead of command name

Date: Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:50:11 +0200

Package: bash-completion
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

killall expects only the command name without arguments or path of the process to kill, e.g. if you want to kill the process with the command line "/usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system", you would have to do "killall dbus-daemon". However, bash_completion for killall tries to find matches using the complete command line.

The following patch addresses this issue by using "ps axo comm" instead of "ps axo command".

diff -u bash-completion.orig/bash_completion bash-completion/bash_completion
--- bash-completion.orig/bash_completion        2008-07-05 15:55:03.000000000 +0200
+++ bash-completion/bash_completion     2008-09-02 14:31:25.000000000 +0200
@@ -947,7 +947,7 @@
 	if [ $COMP_CWORD -eq 1 ] && [[ "$cur" == -* ]]; then
 		_signals
 	else
-		COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W '$( command ps axo command | \
+		COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W '$( command ps axo comm | \
 			      sed -ne "1d; s/^\[\?\([^-][^] ]*\).*$/\1/p" | \
 			      sed -e "s/.*\///" )' -- $cur ) )
 	fi

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26.3 (SMP w/2 CPU cores; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Message #12 received at 497540@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Yanko Kaneti <yaneti@declera.com>

To: 497540@bugs.debian.org

Date: Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:13:39 +0200

It would be nice if this worked but current release of procps trim the
command name to 15 even if the ps comm  column is specified with
additional width.  And these days there are many commands with names
longer than 15  e.g. gnome-blah-blah..

Message #19 received at 497540-quiet@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: David Paleino <d.paleino@gmail.com>

To: 497540-quiet@bugs.debian.org

Cc: Bash-Completion Developers <bash-completion-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>, Yanko Kaneti <yaneti@declera.com>

Subject: procfs stores process name in a truncated form in /proc/<pid>/stat

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 11:32:48 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

clone 497540 -1
reassign -1 src:linux-2.6
retitle -1 "procfs stores process name in a truncated form in /proc/<pid>/stat"
thanks

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:13:39 +0200, Yanko Kaneti wrote:

> It would be nice if this worked but current release of procps trim the
> command name to 15 even if the ps comm  column is specified with
> additional width.  And these days there are many commands with names
> longer than 15  e.g. gnome-blah-blah..

Hello,
while fixing #497540 we stumbled upon a bug in procps. Trying to fix completion
for "killall", we wanted to use "ps axo comm" instead of "ps axo command", but
that truncates process names at 15 characters. It could've been a procps bug,
but the truncated form is really stored in /proc/<pid>/stat:

# cat /proc/12571/stat
12571 (hald-addon-stor) S 12519 12518 12518 0 -1 4194304 347 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 20 0
1 0 520073 3391488 260 4294967295 134512640 134528780 3220600864 3220600436
3084521718 0 0 4097 0 0 0 0 17 0 0 0 0 0 0
#

(that should've really been "hald-addon-storage")

This obviously breaks a number of applications depending on procfs to get the
process name.

Is there a reason for this 15-characters-limitation?

Kindly,
David

-- 
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Message #24 received at 497540@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: "Santiago M. Mola" <cooldwind@gmail.com>

To: 497540@bugs.debian.org

Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:53:11 +0100

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

I can't reproduce the original issue. The old code:
  ps axo command | sed -ne "1d; s/^\[\?\([^-][^] ]*\).*$/\1/p" | sed -e
"s/.*\///"
outputs dbus-daemon correctly.

Could someone post the 'ps axo command' output from Debian? Can anyone
actually confirm the original bug?

By the way, both the old and new code get some commands wrong (noticed
those '0' and '1' one the completion?). Something like this might work
better:
  ps axo command |sed -e "1d; s: .*$::g; s:^/.*/::g; s/:$//g; s:^-::g;
s:^\[::g; s:\]$::g; s:/.*::g"

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