[Bug 1732962] [NEW] apport uses sys.argv instead of named arguments

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Matthieu Clemenceau (mclemenceau):

data/apport which processes core files expects a certain quantity of
arguments in a specific order. This ended up causing an issue with some
security updates where we were trying to support a new version of apport
on a host system and one inside a container.  Here's something of an
example:

347 # Normal startup
348 if len(sys.argv) not in (5, 6):
349     try:
350         print('Usage: %s <pid> <signal number> <core file ulimit> <dump mode> [global pid]' % sys.argv[0])
351         print('The core dump is read from stdin.')

We could not maintain backwards compatibility because "global pid" is an
optional argument and "dump mode" was a new argument. So if there were
five arguments its possible the last one was "dump mode" (no global pid)
or "global pid" (no support for dump mode).

Its possible to use strings in /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern so we could
use those and have apport accept named arguments e.g:

$ cat /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
|/usr/share/apport/apport --pid=%p --signal=%s --core-size=%c --dump-mode=%d --global-pid=%P

['/home/bdmurray/source-trees/apport/artful/data/apport', '--pid=5870',
'--signal=11', '--core-size=0', '--dump-mode=1', '--global-pid=5870']

Tyler said "that's probably a nice cleanup to make no matter what
because the magic arg ordering is dangerous".

** Affects: apport
     Importance: Low
     Assignee: Julian Andres Klode (juliank)
         Status: Fix Committed

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

** Affects: apport (Ubuntu Trusty)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Won't Fix

** Affects: apport (Ubuntu Xenial)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: In Progress

** Affects: apport (Ubuntu Bionic)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: In Progress

** Affects: apport (Ubuntu Cosmic)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Won't Fix

** Affects: apport (Ubuntu Disco)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: Fix Released


** Tags: id-5a0f2a3d5a9357e93d7f6816
-- 
apport uses sys.argv instead of named arguments
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1732962
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