I upgraded to Python 2.3, and was instructed to run python-updater. This script updated 6 packages but failed on one of them. At the end of the script, it started generating a result summary, using the ewarn macro from functions.sh. This macro in turn calls the logger application to write to the system log. One of the strings to be logged is a " ". According to 'ps -ax', the logger receives arguments "-p daemon.warning -t rc-scripts --" and starts waiting for input on stdin. Result: logger halts, python-updater halts, user is confused. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Upgrade to python 2.3 2. Run python-updater 3. Make certain it fails upgrading at least one package (no idea how one could achieve this, but it happened to me :-) 4. Wait, and wait, and wait... Actual Results: I returned the next morning and found a frozen script. Some script inspection combined with the 'ps -ax' output told me exactly what had gone wrong: the logger application was halted. Expected Results: It should have logged the results of the python-updater script. Simple workaround: Ctrl-Z, ps -ax, kill <logger process ID>, fg (multiple times, because the script contains several attempts to log empty strings :-) A more elegant solution: Please don't try to log blank strings in python-updater.sh!!! The ultimate solution: trap this situation in functions.sh. I verified that you can log a blank string with command 'logger -- " "'. The esyslog() function could test for a blank/empty string and then use the above construct to log a single space char...
Are you using an old version of baselayout? Is this bug related? http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16466
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