Re: Unfortunate error message for invalid executable

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/29/22 7:33 AM, Martin D Kealey wrote:
> On Sun, 29 May 2022, 06:56 AA via Bug reports for the GNU Bourne Again
> SHell, <bug-bash@gnu.org> wrote:
>
> > Maybe the concern is that any additional calls (such as checking for path
> > existence) may have unintended consequences [but that] seems unlikely.
> >
> > Therefore, IMHO it is very hard to argue with the fact that the file
> > passed to the kernel does in fact exist
>
>
> Actually it's quite easy to argue with that: a race condition between when
> execve fails and when we subsequently check whether the file exists means
> we could be hoodwinked into reporting the wrong error message in both
> directions.

Yes, it's clearly a kernel problem that the shell is trying to overcome.
There was a lot of discussion about this the last time it came up. I think
Andrea even filed a Linux kernel bug report.

--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/