Re: GNU Parallel Bug Reports parallel cannot cope with process with empty name

[Ole Tange]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 6:06 PM, Daniel Colascione <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 06/26/2015 11:52 AM, Ole Tange wrote:
>> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 2:51 AM, Daniel Colascione <address@hidden> wrote:
>>
>>> It's possible for a process to have an empty name:
>>
>> I have seen this twice:
>>
>> * Once on a Mac running Cubase's license server software
>> * Once on a Linux system that was compromised by criminals
>>
>>> $ ps -ef | perl -ane '1..1 and /^(.*)CO?MM?A?N?D/ and $s=length
>>> $1;s/^.{$s}//; print "@F[1,2] $_"' | grep 900
>>> 90029 90023
>>
>> Can you elaborate on what OS you are running and which crazy program
>> removes it's program name from the process list?
>
> It's an internal program running a typical GNU/Linux system. The
> program's provenance doesn't matter: it's both legal and possible for
> programs to give themselves empty names.

Correct. Yet if most programs did that, a lot would be much harder,
which in my opinion is crazy. It is also both legal and possible to
rename all files and dirs to only consist of combinations of space,
tab and newline, but I would also call that crazy:

  find . -print0 | sort -zr | parallel -0 mv {} '{=
$a=$job->seq();$_="";@s=split//,"\t
\n";while($a>=1){$_.=$s[$a%3];$a/=3;} =}'

> Are you suggesting it's okay
> for Parallel to fall over and die (in a loop, no less, when executed
> with --version) because some program uses a supported API in a way that
> displeases you?

I am suggesting that the only situations I have seen this happen in are:

* Once on a Linux system that was compromised by criminals. In this
instance GNU Parallel was actually the initial reason why they started
an investigation and thereby discovered the criminals.

* Once on a Mac running Cubase's license server software. Since
Cubase's iLok server will probably run on quite a few Macs, GNU
Parallel now has an exception for this.

As I see the situation I will have to weigh between 2 basic scenarios:

* Keep the code as is. It has proven that it (indirectly) catches criminal acts.

* Change the code to deal nicely with a program of which I only know
that it has a silly idea to rename itself to the empty string, and for
all I know may be used by only a single user in the world.

If the program was widespread, then that would not be a hard choice,
which is why I am interested to know more about the program.


/Ole