Bug: cannot add a very long command to queue

[orsharir]

When trying to add a command with many parameters, task-spooler will crash at:

task-spooler/execute.c

Line 45 in e5a9911

error("Reading the size of the name");

I'm currently using a workaround by having a script that stores the command in a variable, and then pass task-spooler a script that reads the command from the variable and execute it. But that's just a hack of course.

Here are my workaround scripts:

ts_helper with usage ts_helper OPTIONS @ LONG_COMMAND:

#!/bin/bash
IFS='@' read -ra ARGS <<< "$@";
if [ ${#ARGS[@]} -eq 2 ];
then
  SCRIPTRAW="${ARGS[1]}"
  SCRIPT="$SCRIPTRAW" ts "${ARGS[0]}" ts_helper_runner;
else
  echo "Wrong number of arguments";
fi;

which calls the script ts_helper_runner:

#!/bin/bash
exec $SCRIPT

[justanhduc]

Hey @orsharir. Thanks for you interest in ts. Unfortunately for long and complex command, putting it in a script is actually a recommend way as ts does not have a some fancy arg parsing tool. Another way is using sh -c 'your command' as you can find here in the Bugs section.
Nonetheless, I find it quite odd when the error happens when sending the log filename, as it should not have anything to do with the command. If possible could you please share your command so I can investigate?

[orsharir]

To clarify, my command is a script with many parameters, so there shouldn't be any need for sh in my case. My specific command call is of no concern (it's a script for training an ML model with many arguments to configure it), but here is a simple example.

This call will work fine:

ts echo 'A long long time ago, in a Galaxy far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far away'

However, this slightly longer call will fail (I'm using -f here to capture the error message from ts):

ts -f echo 'A long long time ago, in a Galaxy far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far far and even further away'

[justanhduc]

Cool! My gut feeling is that something overflows at some point. I'm a bit occupied at the moment but I will investigate it asap. If you have any insight please let me know. Thanks!

[mw75]

I have a similar problem, but it shows a little different. I create tasks via webhook using https://github.com/adnanh/webhook and i'm using the -m/Mail function of ts and all that works great - almost!

My last parameter is one long string. The spooled script receives the last parameter complete! But the created mail has some binary garbage in the line starting with "Command:". That already breaks the view in Outlook and on mobile devices but the webview works. The garbage begins at character 500 of the mail body.

Hopefully these information may help to reproduce and fix the problem.

[justanhduc]

Hey @mw75. Thanks for your info. Just to clarify, did you get it to work with a shorter command?

[justanhduc]

Hi @orsharir @mw75. The issue should be fixed in the latest commit in master. Thanks for reporting the bug!

[orsharir]

Thanks @justanhduc, it appears to be fixed on my end.

[mw75]

Sadly it does not fix my problem!

While compiling with make cpu i get

execute.c:207:17: warning: ‘strncpy’ specified bound 10 equals destination size [-Wstringop-truncation]
                 strncpy(errfname, outfname_full, sizeof errfname);
                 ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
execute.c:184:17: warning: ‘strncpy’ specified bound 10 equals destination size [-Wstringop-truncation]
                 strncpy(errfname, outfname_full, sizeof errfname);
                 ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
...

man.c:801:22: warning: string length ‘11589’ is greater than the length ‘4095’ ISO C99 compilers are required to support [-Woverlength-strings]
                      ".B ts.", tm.tm_year + 1900, tm.tm_mon + 1, TS_MAKE_STR(TS_VERSION), TS_MAKE_STR(TS_VERSION));
                      ^~~~~~~~

I don't know if it is related to the problem or not. Is there something i'm doing wrong. Running and compiling on debian 10.

@orsharir could you have a second look, please?

[justanhduc]

Hey @mw75. They are warnings, and that piece of codes is only executed when you use -E to queue jobs.
Is there any way you can reproduce the problem for me, for e.g., Colab or Docker? Otherwise, it is very difficult to debug just by the information you gave me.

[mw75]

@justanhduc Sorry, missed your response because the issue is still closed!

Steps to reproduce an clean debian system:

#!/bin/bash
cd root/
apt-get update && apt-get install -y build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/justanhduc/task-spooler.git
cd task-spooler/
make cpu
cat >/usr/sbin/sendmail <<EOF
#!/bin/bash
echo "$0 $@" >> /tmp/sendmail.out
cat >> /tmp/sendmail.out
EOF
chmod 755 /usr/sbin/sendmail
./ts -t "$( TS_MAILTO=me@work.earth ./ts -m /bin/bash -c "echo Start;echo looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong;sleep 5;echo End" )"
cat /tmp/sendmail.out

I run it with podman run --rm -it -v .:/root debian /root/tsp-problem-replay.sh

Output:

From: Task Spooler <taskspooler>
To: me@work.earth
Subject: the task 0 finished with error 0.

Command: /bin/bash -c echo Start;echo looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
{Ba�{Ba�Output:
/bin/bash -c echo Start;echo looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong;sleep 5;echo End

There is also some more garbage in front of "Output:"

I hope that helps to reproduce! Please reopen the issue so i get notified on updates!

[mw75]

diff --git a/mail.c b/mail.c
index 6d3d511..8f1feb6 100755
--- a/mail.c
+++ b/mail.c
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ static void write_header(int fd, const char *dest, const char *command,
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "To: %s\n", dest);
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "Subject: the task %i finished with error %i. \n", jobid,
                errorlevel);
-    fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "\nCommand: %s\n", command);
+    fd_nprintf(fd, 12+(int)strlen(command), "\nCommand: %s\n", command);
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "Output:\n");
 }

Don't know if this works with unicode/multibyte strings, but it fixed my problem.

[justanhduc]

diff --git a/mail.c b/mail.c
index 6d3d511..8f1feb6 100755
--- a/mail.c
+++ b/mail.c
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ static void write_header(int fd, const char *dest, const char *command,
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "To: %s\n", dest);
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "Subject: the task %i finished with error %i. \n", jobid,
                errorlevel);
-    fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "\nCommand: %s\n", command);
+    fd_nprintf(fd, 12+(int)strlen(command), "\nCommand: %s\n", command);
     fd_nprintf(fd, 500, "Output:\n");
 }

Don't know if this works with unicode/multibyte strings, but it fixed my problem.

Hey @mw75! Great catch! I can see that your command is a little longer than the hardcoded 500, so it truncates the command and prints some garbage at the end of the sentence.
I wouldn't worry much about unicode, as C itself handles it poorly and strlen is used everywhere else.
Would you like to make a PR? :)