Fortune sometimes (about 5% of the runs) outputs a few (one or two) characters in front of the last line of it's output. It does not happen to the same fortunes every time, it seems completely random. Eksamples: - In the middle of a wide field is a pot of gold. 100 feet to the north stands a smart manager. 100 feet to the south stands a dumb manager. 100 feet to the east is the Easter Bunny, and 100 feet to the west is Santa Claus. Q: Who gets to the pot of gold first? feA: The dumb manager. All the rest are myths. - Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony. nd -- Robert Benchley - Wherever the last line begins with spaces (as with the last example), the character replaces the spaces instead of just inserting themselves. My fortune also frequently segfaults, but I think that is unrelated. Dralnu has the random char problem, but not segfaults; see http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3507986.html. He's on x86, I'm on amd64. Both could be due to my fairly aggressive CFLAGS. emerge --info: Portage 2.1-r2 (default-linux/amd64/2005.1, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.6-r3, 2.6.15-gentoo-r5ws1 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.15-gentoo-r5ws1 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3700+ Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14 app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present] dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.13-r2 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=k8 -mtune=k8 -funroll-all-loops -fpeel-loops -funswitch-loops -ftracer -funit-at-a-time -fomit-frame-pointer -O3 -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-march=k8 -mtune=k8 -funroll-all-loops -fpeel-loops -funswitch-loops -ftracer -funit-at-a-time -fomit-frame-pointer -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.gentoo.no/ ftp://trumpetti.atm.tut.fi/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/gentoo" LANG="en_US.utf8" LINGUAS="en_GB nb_NO nn_NO" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="amd64 X a52 aac acpi alsa avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdparanoia cdr cli crypt cups dlloader dri dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread eds emacs emboss emul-linux-x86 encode exif fbcon ffmpeg fftw flac foomaticdb fortran ftp gcj gif ginac glut gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 imagemagick imlib isdnlog java javascript joystick jpeg jpeg2k lm_sensors lzw lzw-tiff mikmod mime mozilla mp3 mpeg msn ncurses nls nocd nptl nptlonly nsplugin offensive ogg oggvorbis openal opengl pam pcre pdf pdflib perl plotutils png posix pppd python qt qt3 qt4 quicktime readline reflection sdl session slang speex spell spl ssl svg tcpd tetex threads tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb v4l vcd verbose videos vorbis xine xinerama xml xmms xorg xosd xpm xv xvid zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse kernel_linux linguas_en_GB linguas_nb_NO linguas_nn_NO userland_GNU video_cards_nvidia video_cards_fbdev video_cards_vesa video_cards_vga" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
upgrade your recode to latest ~amd64 version and see if that fixes things
That seems to have fixed it. I've been testing for a while now, and haven't seen the random chars again. Not the segfaults either, for that matter. Upgraded ...from app-text/recode-3.6-r1 to app-text/recode-3.6-r2 ...from games-misc/fortune-mod-1.99.1-r1 to games-misc/fortune-mod-1.99.1-r2 I've been testing this enough now that I can safely say the problem is resolved. Thanks SpanKY.
np ... i'm pushing to have that recode stabilized
