ecryptfs-users team mailing list archive

[David Tomaschik <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Almost sounds like a chroot environment within screen; but doing chroot
requires root normally.  Do any commands fail to run?  "ls", "cat", etc. are
all shell built-ins for most shells, so they would be able to run in a
chroot.  Full executables, being outside the chroot, would not.
 Alternatively, it's possible that ecryptfs somehow mounted over /, but then
I'd expect a lot more breakage.  (And the same behavior both inside and
outside screen.)

Try creating another user with a similar setup and see if the same occurs.
If not, it's likely she's got a setting in .screenrc, .profile, or .bash*
(assuming using bash) that's doing something odd.  Also, can you provide the
output of "mount" by itself?  This will tell us if anything is mounted on /.

David


On Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 5:07 PM, Alberto Bertogli
<albertito@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

>
> Hi!
>
> A friend is having a very strange bug, that I think (I'm not sure) it might
> be
> ecryptfs related. She has Ubuntu 9.10 (installed 9.04, then upgraded) and
> uses
> ecryptfs to encrypt her home directory (using the standard Ubuntu setup).
>
> Sometimes (no idea when or why) the following happens: using GNU screen,
> you
> open a new shell (ctrl-a c) bash prompt says it's in '/'; pwd says it's in
> '/'.
>
> ls shows the contents of her home directory. You can do cat <file in her
> home
> directory> and it works doing cat <file in /> does not work.
>
> I've done a couple of straces and the behaviour is consistant with the
> current
> directory being her home, but getcwd() returning '/'.  I verified this also
> using Python's os module, just in case it was a tool issue.
>
> I can also cd <dir inside her home> and pwd shows '/<dir inside her home>',
> with the same behaviour as before. While I'm in there, I get the same
> behaviour as before (cat works, open works, etc., but getcwd() returns the
> wrong directory). However, if I do 'cd /<dir in her home>' I get ENOENT.
>
> The problem goes away if I do 'cd' or 'cd /<her home dir>'
>
> >From what I can see, it looks like getcwd() is using '/' instead of $HOME.
>
>
> At the moment I can reproduce this at will by creating new shells inside an
> existing screen. It does not happen in new terminals. She said this has
> happened before, but has no idea when or why (although it happened also in
> 9.04). I'm not sure if after she reboots or closes this screen it will be
> so
> easy to reproduce (it looks like the shells are inheriting this behaviour
> from
> the screen process).
>
>
> If you need any further information (or want me to test anything), please
> let
> me know.
>
> Thanks a lot,
>                Alberto
>
>
> PS (just in case it's not the usual procedure): please CC me on replies, as
> I'm not subscribed to the list.
>
>
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-- 
David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
GNU/Linux System Architect
GPG: 0x5DEA789B
david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx