[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#406677: alsa-utils: Alsaconf as a forkbomb

[Robert Gomułka]

Package: alsa-utils
Version: 1.0.13-1
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks the whole system

On my system alsaconf acts as a forkbomb. It is therefore unusable.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Login as root.
2. Run alsaconf.
3. Press enter on welcome screen.
4. On lower part of the screen one can see "unloading snd-emu10k-synth"
or sth. similar.
5. After a few seconds mouse starts lagging, then keyboard stops
reacting. Hard disk drive LED blinks as hell (swapping?).
6. If one has good luck, can see multitude processes of modprobe/sh -c
pairs. I don't know full command line, because had chance to execute ps
aux (without w) and after two repetitions I didn't want to reproduce it
further.
Looking at /proc/config.gz reveals that I have modules unloading
enabled.
Sound card: Sound Blaster Live! on emu10k1 chip.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18.3.rg1
Locale: LANG=pl_PL, LC_CTYPE=pl_PL (charmap=ISO-8859-2)

Versions of packages alsa-utils depends on:
ii  dialog                    1.0-20060221-2 Displays user-friendly dialog boxe
ii  libasound2                1.0.13-1       ALSA library
ii  libc6                     2.5-0exp3      GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libncurses5               5.5-5          Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  linux-sound-base          1.0.13-3       base package for ALSA and OSS soun
ii  lsb-base                  3.1-22         Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  module-init-tools         3.3-pre4-1     tools for managing Linux kernel mo
ii  pciutils                  1:2.2.4-1      Linux PCI Utilities
ii  python                    2.4.4-2        An interactive high-level object-o
ii  whiptail                  0.52.2-9       Displays user-friendly dialog boxe

Versions of packages alsa-utils recommends:
ii  alsa-base                     1.0.13-3   ALSA driver configuration files

-- no debconf information