[Bug 1507681] [NEW] killall with 65 arguments kills more than expected

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Robie Basak (racb):

killall in Precise is supposed to limit the number of arguments to 64,
but due to a fencepost error, 66 arguments will be blocked but 65 is
not.

With 65 arguments, the behavior varies, but in some cases will send a
signal to random processes.

# ps xa | wc -l
164

# mkdir ~/tmp_tasks/
# for i in `seq 1 65`; do touch ~/tmp_tasks/test$i; done;

# for i in `seq 1 65`; do echo ~/tmp_tasks/test$i; done  | xargs killall
Connection to 198.18.88.176 closed by remote host.
Connection to 198.18.88.176 closed.

# ps xa | wc -l
126

This is fixed upstream and at the very least trusty works fine.

** Affects: psmisc (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Fix Released

** Affects: psmisc (Ubuntu Precise)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: Triaged


** Tags: bitesize patch
-- 
killall with 65 arguments kills more than expected
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1507681
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