[Bug 1732962] Re: apport uses sys.argv instead of named arguments

[Julian Andres Klode]

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: apport (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Fix Committed

** Changed in: apport
       Status: In Progress => Fix Committed

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu Bionic)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu Xenial)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu Disco)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: Fix Committed

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu Trusty)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Also affects: apport (Ubuntu Cosmic)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1732962

Title:
  apport uses sys.argv instead of named arguments

Status in Apport:
  Fix Committed
Status in apport package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in apport source package in Trusty:
  New
Status in apport source package in Xenial:
  New
Status in apport source package in Bionic:
  New
Status in apport source package in Cosmic:
  New
Status in apport source package in Disco:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  data/apport which processes core files expects a certain quantity of
  arguments in a specific order. This ended up causing an issue with
  some security updates where we were trying to support a new version of
  apport on a host system and one inside a container.  Here's something
  of an example:

  347 # Normal startup
  348 if len(sys.argv) not in (5, 6):
  349     try:
  350         print('Usage: %s <pid> <signal number> <core file ulimit> <dump mode> [global pid]' % sys.argv[0])
  351         print('The core dump is read from stdin.')

  We could not maintain backwards compatibility because "global pid" is
  an optional argument and "dump mode" was a new argument. So if there
  were five arguments its possible the last one was "dump mode" (no
  global pid) or "global pid" (no support for dump mode).

  Its possible to use strings in /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern so we
  could use those and have apport accept named arguments e.g:

  $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/core_pattern
  |/usr/share/apport/apport --pid=%p --signal=%s --core-size=%c --dump-mode=%d --global-pid=%P

  ['/home/bdmurray/source-trees/apport/artful/data/apport', '--
  pid=5870', '--signal=11', '--core-size=0', '--dump-mode=1', '--global-
  pid=5870']

  Tyler said "that's probably a nice cleanup to make no matter what
  because the magic arg ordering is dangerous".

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