[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#295577: alsa-base: bashism in /etc/init.d/alsa

[Sergei Ivanov]

Package: alsa-base
Version: 1.0.8-4
Severity: normal
Tags: patch

The alsa initscript uses
	eval $1 --help || ...
to test the presence of a command "$1". However the behavior
of `eval foo || bar' after `set -e' is shell-dependent,
see Bug#268944.

If /bin/sh is dash, and the command in question is amixer,
the script fails immediately due to `amixer --help' returning
exit code 1, and dash's poor handling of eval. If /bin/sh is bash,
the function correctly finds that amixer is present.

While this is arguably a bug in dash and a bug in amixer (non-standard 
handling of --help), it's better to avoid this kind of testing in 
initscripts. Removing `eval' fixes the problem - its argument
is not going to be expandable anyway.

--- /etc/init.d/alsa.orig	2005-01-31 11:41:21.000000000 +0300
+++ /etc/init.d/alsa	2005-02-16 22:19:47.000000000 +0300
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@
 # See #218530 for a discussion of this issue.
 executable()
 {
-	eval $1 --help > /dev/null 2>&1 || case "$?" in (126|127) return 1 ;; esac
+	$1 --help > /dev/null 2>&1 || case "$?" in (126|127) return 1 ;; esac
 	return 0
 }
 
--
Best regards,
Sergei

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-s1
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=ru_RU.KOI8-R (charmap=KOI8-R)

Versions of packages alsa-base depends on:
ii  alsa-utils                    1.0.8-1    ALSA utilities
ii  debconf                       1.4.30.11  Debian configuration management sy
ii  debianutils                   2.8.4      Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  lsof                          4.71-1     List open files.
ii  module-init-tools             3.2-pre1-2 tools for managing Linux kernel mo
ii  modutils                      2.4.26-1.2 Linux module utilities

-- debconf information:
  alsa-base/alsactl_store_on_shutdown: never autosave