I've update the description. Feel free to adjust if you feel I'm misrepresenting the issue.
** Description changed: - Binary package hint: netcat-openbsd + netcat-openbsd's -q setting defaults to 0. This means that as soon as + stdin is closed, it will terminate. - On Lucid Lynx (Beta 1): + For instance, this manifests itself by giving no output used like this: - When piping input to netcat-openbsd (the pre-installed netcat on the - Amazon EC2 AMIs), standard output is broken. - - The following has no output at all: $ printf 'GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' | nc www.google.com 80 - It works when typing the input on the terminal, but that's not feasible in scripts: - $ nc www.google.com 80 - GET / HTTP/1.0 + because printf terminates, causing nc to terminate before Google + responds. - HTTP/1.0 302 Found - [...] - $ + However, running nc without the pipe and typing the GET request works. - It should look like this: - $ printf 'GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n' | nc www.google.com 80 - HTTP/1.0 302 Found - [...] + netcat-traditional defaults to not quitting on stdin closing (ie a + default value of -1). - netcat-traditional is not affected. Neither is netcat on OpenBSD, nor - the "netcat-openbsd" package on Debian. + The original netcat from OpenBSD does not have a -q option if I (Soren) + remember correctly and behaves similarly to netcat-traditional. + + netcat-openbsd in Debian is not affected either, since this is caused by + a patch carried by Ubuntu (which I honestly forget whether I wrote or + took from Fedora (it's been more than two years)). + + This default value, FWIW, was chosen because libvirt (at least at the + time) would do something like "ssh somehost nc -U /var/lib/libvirt/sock" + (not passing a -q option) when connecting to remote hosts over ssh. + Terminating the ssh session left the stale nc around (because it did not + care that stdin had been close) around, making it impossible for others + to connect to the same libvirt instance. Patching libvirt to pass -q was + not sufficient, because others could be using a stock libvirt and + inadvertently cause a Denial of Service of libvirt (because their nc + process would stick around indefinitely). ** Changed in: netcat-openbsd (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided => Wishlist -- netcat-openbsd exits too soon https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/544935 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
