Package: live-build
Version: 1:20240810
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: adrela...@kicksecure.com
Expected result:
I should be able to specify arbitrary environment variables in
config/environment.chroot and have them be picked up by commands that
run within the chroot.
Actual result:
If I specify an environment variable that includes a space in the
variable's value (for instance, TEST_ENV_VAR='abc def ghi'), the build
crashes with `/usr/bin/env: 'def': No such file or directory`.
Steps to reproduce:
* Create a new directory, 'test-build', and change to it.
* Run `lb config` to create a base configuration.
* Create `config/environment.chroot` with the following contents:
TEST_ENV_VAR='abc def ghi'
* Run `sudo lb build`. The ISO build will fail partway through as
described above.
From looking at the source code, it appears that the `/usr/bin/env`
call that is failing is at
https://salsa.debian.org/live-team/live-build/-/blob/master/functions/chroot.sh?ref_type=heads#L32,
which attempts to use the shell's word splitting feature to convert a
space-separated string into multiple arguments, each one corresponding
to an environment variable. This doesn't work when one of the
environment variables has a space in it though, because the shell's
word splitting will split on *any* space, *even spaces within quotes,*
in this scenario. You can reproduce this in a Bash shell with the
following one-liner:
fn () { echo $#; }; var="TEST_ENV_VAR='abc def ghi'"; fn $var
The output will be '3', rather than the '1' you might expect.
I've tried multiple ways of solving this, all without success:
* Using `eval` to run the `env` command. The idea behind this is that
the calling shell can expand the ENV variable, then `eval` will cause
the command to be re-parsed, thus causing the quotes to be recognized
and fixing the word splitting issue. I can't seem to escape the right
combination of things in the `env` command to make this work, and I
corrupted a VM trying, so I wouldn't recommend pursuing this without
caution.
* Trying various forms of quoting the variable differently. This
doesn't work because word splitting is ignoring the nested quotes
entirely.
* Removing bashism checks from live-build, forcing the use of bash, and
then using an array for ENV instead. This allowed me to use array
expansion rather than usual variable expansion. This seemed to work
at first surface, but for some reason the actual command called by
`env` seemed to not be recognizing the environment variables I passed
in.
* Hijacking the `env` call by making the contents of
`environment.chroot` point to the name of a script, which I then
attempted to include using the `includes.chroot_after_packages`
directory. The script's job was to simply set the correct environment
variables, then run the command. This didn't work because the first
place where `Chroot` is called is in one of the bootstrap scripts. No
includes are extracted yet at that point.
* Groaning while looking at the screen. Sadly, the screen is either
deaf or completely devoid of compassion.
I am encountering this issue on Debian 12, using a backported build of
live-build. My system information shows Ubuntu because I used an Ubuntu
computer to write the bug report.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
APT prefers noble-updates
APT policy: (500, 'noble-updates'), (500, 'noble-security'), (500,
'noble'), (100, 'noble-backports') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 6.8.0-45-kfocus (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_USER, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE not set Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages live-build depends on:
ii cpio 2.15+dfsg-1ubuntu2
ii debootstrap 1.0.134ubuntu1
ii initramfs-tools 0.142ubuntu25.4
live-build recommends no packages.
Versions of packages live-build suggests:
ii dosfstools 4.2-1.1build1
ii fakeroot 1.33-1
ii genisoimage 9:1.1.11-3.5
ii git 1:2.43.0-1ubuntu7.1
pn gnu-fdisk <none>
ii memtest86+ 7.00-1build1
pn mtools <none>
ii parted 3.6-4build1
ii squashfs-tools 1:4.6.1-1build1
ii sudo 1.9.15p5-3ubuntu5
pn syslinux | grub <none>
ii uuid-runtime 2.39.3-9ubuntu6.1
pn win32-loader <none>
