Puppet users - May 2007 - ruby-shadow problems for 0.22.4 on Debian/Ubuntu AMD64

I thought I''d put this out there for anyone to save anyone
who''s running
0.22.4 on AMD64 hosts a whole world of hurt.

Basically, the libshadow-ruby1.8 package that Puppet (as of 0.22.4) relies
on is broken for AMD64 in both Debian (Sarge+) and Ubuntu (all releases).
The problem is basically just some non-portable code.  I''ve reported
the bug
into Debian with a patch, so anyone who is having troubles with their Puppet
programs segfaulting on AMD64 (it might also occur on other non-i386
architectures) and talking about things failing in shadow.so, then give the
patch in http://bugs.debian.org/425234 a go.

Now, of course, having gone through that little trial, I''m better
equipped
to hunt down some of the more vicious segfaults people have been finding for
a long time now...

As an aside, what are people using to provide the ruby-shadow functionality
on other platforms?  The standard distribution only provides
''etc'' (for
/etc/passwd and /etc/group), not the shadow equivalents, and I can''t
find a
gem for it in the rubygems system anywhere.  It''s all very odd...

- Matt

-- 
<liw> hut.fi has or used to have two nfs servers not-responding and
still-trying... don''t know if their dns server was not-found... 4o4
would be
then a good name for the web server... endless hours of fun
<aj> "did you get a response from 4o4?" "nah, it just
404ed"

On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 09:33:00PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> I thought I''d put this out there for anyone to save anyone
who''s running
> 0.22.4 on AMD64 hosts a whole world of hurt.
> 
> Basically, the libshadow-ruby1.8 package that Puppet (as of 0.22.4) relies
> on is broken for AMD64 in both Debian (Sarge+) and Ubuntu (all releases).
> The problem is basically just some non-portable code.  I''ve
reported the bug
> into Debian with a patch, so anyone who is having troubles with their
Puppet
> programs segfaulting on AMD64 (it might also occur on other non-i386
> architectures) and talking about things failing in shadow.so, then give the
> patch in http://bugs.debian.org/425234 a go.
>
> Now, of course, having gone through that little trial, I''m better
equipped
> to hunt down some of the more vicious segfaults people have been finding
for
> a long time now...
> 
> As an aside, what are people using to provide the ruby-shadow functionality
> on other platforms?  The standard distribution only provides
''etc'' (for
> /etc/passwd and /etc/group), not the shadow equivalents, and I
can''t find a
> gem for it in the rubygems system anywhere.  It''s all very odd...
An rpm for it should appear shortly for Fedora[1], it has a similar patch (you
need
to patch the rb_struct_new calls as well btw), I''ve send the patch to
the author
but I haven''t got a reply so far.

[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=240008 

Cheers,
Kostas

On May 20, 2007, at 7:33 AM, Matthew Palmer wrote:
>
> As an aside, what are people using to provide the ruby-shadow  
> functionality
> on other platforms?  The standard distribution only provides  
> ''etc'' (for
> /etc/passwd and /etc/group), not the shadow equivalents, and I  
> can''t find a
> gem for it in the rubygems system anywhere.  It''s all very odd...
Just so it''s out in the open...  We could pretty easily write a  
method that just read in the Shadow file and got the password for the  
user.  This would, of course, have its own heinous portability  
problems, but it wouldn''t be hard to do for those platforms that use  
an old-style shadow.

It''d have to be done in a module, almost as a provider-provider (that  
is, a portable way of providing the same functionality to different  
providers), but it''s not that hard.

I just preferred to rely on that existing library to start, and it  
seems to make more sense to use this lower layer whenever possible.

  --
  If a `religion'' is defined to be a system of ideas that contains
  unprovable statements, then Godel taught us that mathematics is not
  only a religion, it is the only religion that can prove itself to be
  one. 					-- John Barrow
  ---------------------------------------------------------------------
  Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com

On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 03:53:20PM +0100, Kostas Georgiou
wrote:
> On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 09:33:00PM +1000, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> 
> > I thought I''d put this out there for anyone to save anyone
who''s running
> > 0.22.4 on AMD64 hosts a whole world of hurt.
> > 
> > Basically, the libshadow-ruby1.8 package that Puppet (as of 0.22.4)
relies
> > on is broken for AMD64 in both Debian (Sarge+) and Ubuntu (all
releases).
> > The problem is basically just some non-portable code.  I''ve
reported the bug
> > into Debian with a patch, so anyone who is having troubles with their
Puppet
> > programs segfaulting on AMD64 (it might also occur on other non-i386
> > architectures) and talking about things failing in shadow.so, then
give the
> > patch in http://bugs.debian.org/425234 a go.
> >
> > Now, of course, having gone through that little trial, I''m
better equipped
> > to hunt down some of the more vicious segfaults people have been
finding for
> > a long time now...
> > 
> > As an aside, what are people using to provide the ruby-shadow
functionality
> > on other platforms?  The standard distribution only provides
''etc'' (for
> > /etc/passwd and /etc/group), not the shadow equivalents, and I
can''t find a
> > gem for it in the rubygems system anywhere.  It''s all very
odd...
> 
> An rpm for it should appear shortly for Fedora[1], it has a similar patch
(you need
> to patch the rb_struct_new calls as well btw), I''ve send the patch
to the author
> but I haven''t got a reply so far.
Hmm, thanks for pointing that out.  It seems to work (so far) just patching
the rb_struct_define calls, but I''ll push your patch to the Debian
maintainer as well, for safety.

- Matt