“fun” bug in 64-bit perl 5.10.0 bigint sprintf

Here’s a rather unexpected bug with perl sprintf

#! /usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use bigint ;

my $a = hex( "0x0A0000001D05A820" ) ;
printf( "0x%016X\n", $a ) ;
printf( "%d\n", $a ) ;
printf( "$a\n" ) ;

The %X printf produces a value where the least significant 0x20 is lost:

$ ./bigint
0x0A0000001D05A800
720575940866189312
720575940866189344

Observe that the loss occurs in the printf and not the hex() call, since 720575940866189344 == 0x0A0000001D05A820.

This bug appears to be fixed in some version of perl <= 5.16.2. Oh, the joys of using ancient operating system versions so that we can support customers on many of the ancient deployments that they seem to like to run on.

clearcase vs. /proc//fd/. clearcase within setview looses.

Here’s a curious clash of virtual filesystems. Am trying to access my own processes’ /proc/-pid-/fd directory to investigate a file descriptor leak, and am unable to do so:

$  ps -ef | grep db2sysc | grep peeter | grep -v grep | tail -1
peeterj   9318  9316 99 12:09 ?        01:03:14 db2sysc 0
$  cd /proc/9318/fd
bash: cd: /proc/9318/fd: Permission denied
$  cd /proc/9318
$  ls
/bin/ls: cannot read symbolic link cwd: Permission denied
/bin/ls: cannot read symbolic link root: Permission denied
/bin/ls: cannot read symbolic link exe: Permission denied
attr  cmdline  cwd      exe  loginuid     maps  mounts     oom_adj    root     smaps  statm   task
auxv  cpuset   environ  fd   mapped_base  mem   numa_maps  oom_score  seccomp  stat   status  wchan

I'd actually seen this before because we have code in our product that tries to access /proc/-pid-/stat stuff, and it doesn't work properly (sometimes and mysteriously).  Even odder, I can't even get at this as root

# ps -o pid -o ruid -o euid -o suid -o fsuid -o fname -a | grep $$
21861     0     0     0     0 sh
# cd /proc/9318/fd
sh: cd: /proc/9318/fd: Permission denied
# cd /proc/9318
# ls
attr  cmdline  cwd      exe  loginuid     maps  mounts     oom_adj    root     smaps  statm   task
auxv  cpuset   environ  fd   mapped_base  mem   numa_maps  oom_score  seccomp  stat   status  wchan
# ls -l
ls: cannot read symbolic link cwd: Permission denied
ls: cannot read symbolic link root: Permission denied
ls: cannot read symbolic link exe: Permission denied
total 0
dr-xr-xr-x   2 peeterj pdxdb2 0 2009-10-27 12:11 attr
-r--------   1 peeterj pdxdb2 0 2009-10-27 12:10 auxv

Something funny is happening in the kernel, since my session does appear to have sufficient root-ish behaviour (even the linux filesystem fsuid is set right). Turns out that this is some kind of clash between the clearcase version control virtual filesystem and the /proc virtual filesystem. When I am in my view, even as root:

# /usr/atria/bin/cleartool pwv
Working directory view: ** NONE **
Set view: peeterj_o26
#

I have no access to much of /proc/, but running as any old user when there is no trouble

$  /usr/atria/bin/cleartool pwv
Working directory view: ** NONE **
Set view: ** NONE **
$  pwd
/proc/9318/fd

What a bizarre quirk! Glad to have this figured out … now back to the file descriptor leak.