Re: 2.4.18 fork & defunct child.

Edgar Toernig wrote:

{ strace listing deleted, see
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=1069053867253 08&w=2 }

>That is not normal /bin/true behaviour. Sure your system
>isn't hacked? Give the -f option to ptrace to see what the
>forked process is trying to do... Compare the size of
>/bin/true with a known-good one.
>
>Ciao, ET.
>

I'm not sure. I should be running tripwire or something, this is the
only one of my systems that doesn't run such a thing, as i have the
firewall locked down and have been busy.
But it is true i accidently did iptables -F and it was left that way for
a few days.

But this happens with any program, not just /bin/true, also the
/bin/true on the root and chroot systems are identical. and with much
interest i discovered, that if i unmount /proc, the problem goes away. aggh.

that is why it is not exhibiting itself in the chroot system, - no /proc.

I also remember that when this first happen nearly a year ago, some
"unix engineer" at the ISP said, oh yeah that's because something in the
ext2 filesystem header is corrupted.. i don't quite remember what he
said exactly, something that sounded so far fetched that i ignored it.
does that ring any bells with anyone?

please help, ug, i hate having a linux system that's not reliable. feels
like having a pet that's in pain or something.

btw,
/lib/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.2.5.so

Keith

(i'm cross-posting here to gcc and admin in the hopes of finding someone
who has seen this, thanks!)

Re: 2.4.18 fork & defunct child.

> { strace listing deleted, see
> http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=1069053867253 08&w=2 }

well, I strace'd by glibc 2.3.2 system /bin/true and it doesn't fork and
doesn't open proc (first place the two straces differ). Maybe your
libraries have been hacked - seems the most likely to me - if this is
happening for all programs than the libc is likely bad...

I can't understand what it is opening /proc/.../exe for and I don't
understand what the ///////// in there is for (I think more than 2
consecutive slashes are illegal in POSIX, not sure though, never use more
than 2 :) )

On a side note /bin/true should take up somewhere like 10 bytes asm code -
what the hell is that thing doing more than exit(1) for? it shouldn't open
any files at all... what a bad design (and true --help and true --version
don't work anyway... duh!)

perhaps try ltrace'ing /bin/true and see what that prints out?

Cheers,
MaZe.