[Pkg-mc-devel] Bug#556922: Console resize freezes mc causing system crash/hang

[Benny Baumann]

Package: mc
Version: 2:4.6.2~git20080311-4
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks the whole system

When running mc inside a screen session via SSH mc crashes as soon as you resize
the window in which mc is displayed. When this error occures mc freezes and
allocates memory in an endless loop in the background. Once system resources
have been reached the entire system freezes. Sometimes (tested with a system
with a Xen 3.2-1 hypervisor) this even might kernel-panic the hypervisor.

Steps to verify (the ones that worked for me):
- Fire up a DomU with Xen (3.2-1)
- Connect to that DomU by SSH
- apt-get install screen mc
- Fire up new screen session or take over an existing with screen -d -RR
- In that screen session start mc
- Resize the Window of the screen session
- MC freezes (now wait a few seconds for MC to fill up the memory)
--> The system completely hangs, probably with Kernel Panic

On the step where mc starts to hang have a view on top or htop regarding mc's
memory usage which suddently increases rapidly. If you kill mc fast enough
(before it reaches the maximum RAM available) no crash of the VM happens.

Regards,
Benny.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.3
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages mc depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.7-18     GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libglib2.0-0                  2.16.6-2   The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgpm2                       1.20.4-3.1 General Purpose Mouse - shared lib
ii  libslang2                     2.1.3-3    The S-Lang programming library - r

mc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages mc suggests:
pn  arj                      <none>          (no description available)
ii  bzip2                    1.0.5-1         high-quality block-sorting file co
pn  dbview                   <none>          (no description available)
ii  file                     4.26-1          Determines file type using "magic"
ii  lynx                     2.8.7dev9-2.1   Text-mode WWW Browser (transitiona
ii  mime-support             3.44-1          MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
pn  odt2txt                  <none>          (no description available)
ii  perl                     5.10.0-19lenny2 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction
ii  unzip                    5.52-12         De-archiver for .zip files
ii  w3m                      0.5.2-2+b1      WWW browsable pager with excellent
pn  xpdf                     <none>          (no description available)
pn  zip                      <none>          (no description available)

-- no debconf information