MS4.x config/runtime issues

David Lee t.d.lee at durham.ac.uk
Fri Nov 8 12:04:17 GMT 2002


On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Julian Field wrote:

> Can you try this:
>
> use Sys::Syslog;
> use Carp;
>
> eval { $SIG{'__DIE__'} = 'IGNORE';
>         croak "Bye bye";
> };
> $SIG{'__DIE__'} = 'DEFAULT';
> print "Hello there\n";
>
> and tell me what it outputs. On my system I just get "Hello there". If the
> "__DIE__" handler isn't working as expected, it will stop with an error.

Get "Hello there".

In the interim I had also tried further adjustments in that area of
Log.pm, namely simply printing a message before and after the:
  eval { Sys::Syslog::setlogsock('unix'); };
(in its various incarnations).

This confirmed that it was successfully getting past this point.  In that
sense all would *appear* to well.  (So I fully expected the "Hello there"
from your test, anyway.)

Another of my trials had been:
   eval { Sys::Syslog::setlogsock('unix') || Sys::Syslog::setlogsock('inet'); };

Again, that had successfully passed this point, but still produced all the
messages, including my test "{before|after} setlogsock()", and including
the:
   We haven't got any child processes [...]
   We have just tried to reap a process which wasn't one of ours!

So I'm reasonably happy that our signal/DIE/eval stuff is OK.

Rather, it looks as though the mere attempt to do "setlogsock('unix')" is
itself having a longer-term side-effect which causes later problems.  Am I
hitting something odd in perl 5.6.0, I wonder?

Given that we have a shared (from NetApp filers) perl installation across
our Solaris/UNIX service we're not in a position simply to upgrade it at
the drop of a hat.  I'd have to find some other workaround, at least in
the short-term.

> For now, you can comment out the setlogsock line.

Sure, that's a fine temporary hack, for us, for the moment.

Looking to the wider community, is there some way that "Log.pm" could
itself do the &_PATH_LOG check before committing to the apparently trojan
"setlogsock('unix')"?  (It seems ironic that our virus-scanner's
innocent-looking "setlogsock('unix')" seems to have a infection-like
result within itself!)

Thanks again, Julian, for your attention to this.


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