Package: update-inetd Version: 4.31 Severity: normal While debugging #531565 I noticed that there was another problem with the invocation of itox in update-inetd. If the inetd.conf line includes any shell meta-characters (in my case, it started with a #-comment), these are not escaped when the command is run. This is what caused update-inetd to break debconf when run in my postinst, since the commande "echo $modearg | itox >&2" actually ended up as an 'echo' command followed by a long comment, meaning that update-inetd ended up writing a newline to STDOUT.
Proposed fix: --- update-inetd.orig 2009-07-19 15:58:59.000000000 +0100 +++ update-inetd 2009-07-19 16:06:57.000000000 +0100 @@ -101,7 +101,9 @@ print STDERR "/usr/share/doc/xinetd/README.Debian for more information.\n"; if (-f "/usr/sbin/itox") { print STDERR "Suggested entry (automatically converted using itox):\n\n"; - system("echo $modearg |itox >&2"); + my $escapedmodearg = $modearg; + $escapedmodearg =~ s/'/'\\''/g; + system("printf '$escapedmodearg' |itox >&2"); } print STDERR "-----------------------------------------------------------\n\n"; } Not only does this fix the quoting problem, but by using printf instead of echo it should fix the "\t" escaping issue too. -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core) Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_GB.UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash Versions of packages update-inetd depends on: ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.26 Debian configuration management sy update-inetd recommends no packages. update-inetd suggests no packages. -- debconf information: update-inetd/ask-several-entries: true update-inetd/title: update-inetd/ask-entry-present: true update-inetd/ask-disable-entries: false update-inetd/ask-remove-entries: false -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org