Bug#1033311: sysvinit-utils: pidof not always returning a pid, when using the full path to a program

[Mark Hindley]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 at 08:37:00AM -0300, Jesse Smith wrote:
> > Given subsequent discussion, could we instead use canonicalize_file_name
> > or realpath here instead? That would give us the "correct" path without
> > pidof having to think hard about symlinks et al.
> 
> I'm open to the possibility. I'm curious as to what you see as the pros
> vs cons of changing the approach used by pidof?

Markus' orginal report suggested this was a regression since Bullseye

 sysvinit-utils | 2.96-7+deb11u1 | stable | amd64, arm64, armel, armhf, i386, mips64el, mipsel, ppc64el, s390x

rather than a proposal to change behaviour.

I think I have found the offending commit:
0b695c7e0b1cac60ed77c56f224e296f023b652e uses memset *after* realpath which wipes
the canonical resolved path.

I suggest this fix as a starting point.

Mark

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