[Bug 1691847] Re: * <type> <limit> <value> broken

[Brian Murray]

This looks like it may still be an issue in the pam from artful
(1.1.8-3.2ubuntu3). Would you mind taking this to the upstream pam
developers?

** Tags added: xenial

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Title:
  * <type> <limit> <value> broken

Status in pam package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I identified a bug in the pam_limits.c source code for Ubuntu
  16.04LTS, as follows:

  It appears that I managed to modify/"fix" the '*' unlimited memlock
  error in pam_limits.c.

  After compiling and running the modified code with the
  /etc/security/limits.conf line of '*   -    memlock  unlimited', I am
  getting my user limits setting as 'ulimit -l unlimited'.

  After studying the code more carefully, I found that the C function,
  parse _config_file was first gathering the domain entry for the
  user/group/everyone in an sscanf function.  Using the domain result, a
  second function was called from within a loop, parse_uid_range.  A
  range_type value, an integer reflecting the set range of users was to
  be returned to the parse_config_file function.  However, in the case
  of '*' (Kleene star), no range_type was ever returned.  Further down
  in parse_config_file, the range_type was checked for a
  LIMIT_RANGE_NONE value and '*' (the Kleene star).  Because range_type
  did not hold the LIMIT_RANGE_NONE value, the process_limit function
  call was never made for '*' and instead a line break occurred that by-
  passed the execution of putting in universal limits.

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