Package: bash
Version: 4.1-2ubuntu4
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

(Forwarded from my bug report against Ubuntu 10.10 (bash 4.1-2ubuntu4,
copy/pasted here)

Binary package hint: bash

This is on Ubuntu 10.10. It very likely still remains in Natty.

I use bash with a prompt that is derived from the current backgrounded
jobs (the script I use to do this is at
http://micah.cowan.name/hg/promptjobs/ - you just source the file and it
does everything). I've customized the colors used, to take advantage of
256-color support in gnome-terminal. An instance of the prompt that
might be produced is:

PS1="\[\033[m\017\033[38;5;103m\]micah-acer\[\033[1m\033[38;5;19m\](\[\033[m\017\033[38;5;83m\]\061\[\033[m\017\033[38;5;189m\]wtitle\[\033[1m\033[38;5;19m\])\[\033[m\017\033[m\017\033[38;5;103m\]$
 \[\033[m\017\]"

(This prompt will only display correctly in xterm-compatible terminals;
the term I use is gnome-terminal.)

With a prompt like this, and in vi-mode ("set -o vi" in bash),
attempting to initiate a search in the history, results in display
glitches (specifically, the history line bash/readline jumps to is
displayed far over to the right, and with a couple garbage characters
before it).

Steps to reproduce:

1. Be in vi-mode ("set -o vi" in bash): in particular, readline's
"non-incremental-reverse-search-history" MUST be bound to the "/" key,
as this has significant effects on how bash/readline choose to prompt
for a history search string (even though, for me at least, the "bind"
command doesn't seem to reflect this). If you're running these steps, it
would be advisible for you to be sufficiently familiar with vi-style
bindings to know how to enter commands.
2. Set PS1 as described above.
3. Invoke the non-incremental-reverse-search-history function by
pressing ESC (to escape vi's insert-mode) and "/" (to prompt for reverse
history).
4. At this point, the "/" you just typed may not be showing up properly:
this is the first symptom that something's wrong.
5. Type in some string that should be present in your recent bash
history (so that bash will jump to a different line), and hit enter.

Result:
The history line bash jumps to will be drawn in the wrong location (far
right of the prompt), and with garbage characters; typing "k" or "j" (or
the cursor keys) to move up or down in history continues to draw these
lines in the wrong location.

Expected Result:
The jumped-to line ought to be drawn immediately to the right of the
prompt, and without garbage characters before it.

Cause of bug:
This bug is from readline (it is present both in the readline6 source
package (and probably older, such as readline5), and bash's own built-in
readline code (which has few differences from the sources in readline6).
The bug lies in the function rl_message in display.c, which is called by
_rl_nsearch_init, which is called from noninc_search. rl_message is
primarily intended for writing a "message" on the current line, which
doesn't normally include "invisible" characters (escape sequences, like
the one I'm using in my prompt to set advanced colors), but in this case
is being (ab)used to include the prompt. It uses a buffer of only 128
characters, which in the case of the above prompt/PS1, is overrun. As
long as the system library provides vsnprintf, this does not lead to a
potential buffer overflow, but the results are truncated, and this is
the source of the graphical display glitch, because (a) the prompt is
truncated in the middle of a sequence of "invisible" characters, and (b)
I think the readline code may have other bugs that cause
character-counting not to work properly if the prompt itself is not
completely present at the beginning of a buffer whose value is derived
from the result of rl_message.

Solution:
rl_message ought to use a dynamically-allocated buffer instead, so it
can adjust the size as needed. I'll attach a patch to provide this
shortly.

Workaround:
The statically-allocated buffer is only used to store the final line in
a multi-line prompt (including any invisible characters, and the special
codes used by readline to mark the start and end of invisible-character
sequences). Thus, if you add a newline in the prompt just before the "\$
", the static buffer should have plenty of room. Similar methods might
include not using 256 color support, or any other means to shorten the
total size of the prompt string below 127.

***
A patch for this bug may be found at
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bash/+bug/721982
***

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers lucid-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'lucid-updates'), (500, 'lucid-security'), (500, 'lucid')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-26-generic (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ja_JP.utf8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages bash depends on:
ii  base-files         5.0.0ubuntu20.10.04.3 Debian base system miscellaneous f
ii  dash               0.5.5.1-3ubuntu2      POSIX-compliant shell
ii  debianutils        3.2.2                 Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6              2.11.1-0ubuntu7.8     Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib
ii  libncurses5        5.7+20090803-2ubuntu3 shared libraries for terminal hand

Versions of packages bash recommends:
ii  bash-completion           1:1.1-3ubuntu2 programmable completion for the ba

Versions of packages bash suggests:
pn  bash-doc                      <none>     (no description available)

-- no debconf information



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