Public Service Announcement: F16 users, do a 'yum reinstall bash'

**AdamW** · #1 17th November 2011, 09:41 PM

See title. Anyone running F16 should probably run 'yum reinstall bash' as root, just to be safe from the effects of Bug #752827. A buggy bash upgrade removed the entry for bash from /etc/shells, which seems to have various subtle effects. It could be causing any kind of new weirdness you've noticed in F16 recently.

To see if you've been hit by this you can check /etc/shells and see if the line /bin/bash is in there. If it isn't, 'yum reinstall bash' should fix it. The reinstall is a pretty safe operation anyway, so you may as well just do it to be safe.

Sorry for the bug!

Edit: as of right now, this bug is going to happen after the first update of any fresh F16 installation done without the updates repos enabled. The problem is that the offending script is in the %postun of the bash package that's *in the Fedora 16 images*, so even though we've issued an update with a fix for the script, the bad script is always going to get run the first time you update the bash package after a clean F16 install. So it's actually quite hard to entirely fix the bug. I've asked the maintainer to think if there's a way he can make an update repair the damage done by the bad script, so future installs are not affected.

Dutchy · #2 18th November 2011, 12:08 AM

Yikes, that sounds awkward.
I hope you guys get this sorted out!

I've just checked and my new laptop with F16 was affected.
I however haven't notice anything seriously wrong with it and it is not like I didn't use the CLI or didn't do any scripting.

What kind of weirdness could this bug cause if I may ask?

StephenH · #3 18th November 2011, 01:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dutchy

Yikes, that sounds awkward.
I hope you guys get this sorted out!

I've just checked and my new laptop with F16 was affected.
I however haven't notice anything seriously wrong with it and it is not like I didn't use the CLI or didn't do any scripting.

What kind of weirdness could this bug cause if I may ask?

In my case, it showed up when I went to install the extension for VirtualBox that provides USB support. That led me to investigate and instigate bug reports, first in 706148 against shells where I was told to file against setup and did so in 753780. The OP had a third report listed, so it has made the rounds.

Strange that it was only when the VirtualBox installer needed to use bash that it cropped up and not in prior use. I'm thankful that it is fixed though. That was a rather bad time for it to show up, as I needed to access one program through the virtual Vista machine in VirtualBox, which wanted the USB driver first.

Palooka · #4 19th November 2011, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamW

See title. Anyone running F16 should probably run 'yum reinstall bash' as root, just to be safe from the effects of Bug #752827. A buggy bash upgrade removed the entry for bash from /etc/shells, which seems to have various subtle effects. It could be causing any kind of new weirdness you've noticed in F16 recently.

To see if you've been hit by this you can check /etc/shells and see if the line /bin/bash is in there. If it isn't, 'yum reinstall bash' should fix it. The reinstall is a pretty safe operation anyway, so you may as well just do it to be safe.

Thanks, Adam. I reinstalled as recommended, and the process duly added /bin/bash and /bin/sh to /etc/shells. But out of curiosity, why is /bin/dash listed twice?

Palooka

japafi · #5 20th November 2011, 05:29 PM

I spent 45 minutes figureing out what has gone wrong as I could not login to my F16 system. Not on my regular account, not using root. Fortunately I had another working install I could use, join #fedora and ask for ideas.
I just wonder how this hits persons who do not have secondary (working) install and perhaps have wiped their installation media (Ie. I installed from USB stick, which has been wiped long time ago). Those persons are totally foobared.

Anyway, special thanks to nirik @ #fedora

rtguille · #6 21st November 2011, 03:00 AM

what about this?
* for live-cds, open konsole / gnome-terminal and run a 'yum reinstall bash' and then launch the installer.

Will that suffice for live-cds? (did not try)
I already installed and was hit by the bug installing vbox extentions).

StephenH · #7 21st November 2011, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtguille

what about this?
* for live-cds, open konsole / gnome-terminal and run a 'yum reinstall bash' and then launch the installer.

Will that suffice for live-cds? (did not try)
I already installed and was hit by the bug installing vbox extentions).

Actually, from what I read, you need to do this twice. The first update will get you the buggy version. The second will actually do the update to the fixed version. That failing, you can manually edit your /etc/shells file to ensure that /bin/bash is present. Then your vbox extensions should work fine.

manhh · #8 21st November 2011, 11:39 AM

mark it...

---
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/shells
/sbin/nologin
/bin/dash
[root@localhost ~]# echo /bin/bash >> /etc/shells
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/shells
/sbin/nologin
/bin/dash
/bin/bash

***Gareth Jones*** · #9 21st November 2011, 03:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by manhh

[root@localhost ~]# echo /bin/bash >> /etc/shells
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/shells
/sbin/nologin
/bin/dash
/bin/bash

You probably want /bin/sh in there too.

Gareth

VernDog · #10 21st November 2011, 09:13 PM

GTK! It wasn't in mine. Now it is. Thanks for the heads up.

friTTe · #11 30th December 2011, 05:34 PM

i ran it just to be on the safe side..cheers for the info

ErikLehnsherr · #12 23rd February 2012, 04:40 PM

Done.
Tkx for the update.

benbadge72 · #13 6th March 2012, 03:58 PM

Thank you. Switched to Fedora 16 yesterday evening from Ubuntu. Nice to see community here as well.

zombiedolly · #14 3rd April 2012, 06:56 PM

Thank you!! I just switched from ubuntu and LOVE fedora! Its not boggy at all, but the glitch got me and I couldn't adjust my brightness! lol thanks for this fix

daytooner · #15 10th July 2012, 01:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamW

See title. Anyone running F16 should probably run 'yum reinstall bash' as root, just to be safe from the effects of Bug #752827. A buggy bash upgrade removed the entry for bash from /etc/shells, which seems to have various subtle effects. It could be causing any kind of new weirdness you've noticed in F16 recently.

I've got some weirdness going on (happened after I did my last update):
- gawk is symlink'd to itself
- can't install both vim-enhanced and vim-minimal
(see thread at http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=282045)

I have /bin/sh in /etc/shells, and I even re-installed bash, but nothing changed. Could this problem be something else,or maybe just a cascade of the original problem?

Just checking...

ken