[php-maint] Bug#461755: Bug#461755: /etc/cron.d/php5: /etc/cron.d/php5 fails with too many sessions

[Steve Langasek]

On Sun, Jan 20, 2008 at 03:17:35PM +0000, River Tarnell wrote:
> Package: php5-common
> Version: 5.2.4-2+b1
> Severity: normal
> File: /etc/cron.d/php5

> recently, our /etc/cron.d/php5 has been generating this message:

> 	xargs: rm: Argument list too long

> i'm not sure what's causing this, but the use of xargs seems pointless 
> anyway; 'find -exec rm {};' should work without the possibility of 
> producing this error.

No.  -exec spawns a separate subprocess for each file, and cannot handle
embedded spaces in filenames; it is to be avoided for non-trivial uses.

The only way you could get this error message is if the combined number of
bytes in the environment and argument list exceeded the kernel maximum.  Per
the xargs manpage, by default the arguments are batched in groups of 131072
bytes.  Do you have an extraordinarily large number of environment
variables?  If so, we might be able to fix this bug by using 'env';
otherwise, I can't see any way that this bug would occur with a normal
kernel.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                    http://www.debian.org/
slangasek at ubuntu.com                                     vorlon at debian.org