Hobbit 4.2 - bb2 ack list has strange date 🔗 link

Alan Sparks wrote:

Trying to get a Hobbit 4.2.0+allinone server on CentOS 4.6 x86_64 running.

I am sometimes, when acknowledging an alert getting a very wrong date
string showing in the ack log at the bottom of the bb2 page.  For instance:
Fri May 24 00:07:50 9630 	den1log43 	disk 		uiadmin (10.1.10.112)
asparks: blown datafile


Where in the world can "year 9630" be coming from?

The acknowledge.log has the following line:
1220503494      525808  60      525808  np_filename_not_used   
den1log43.disk
yellow  asparks: blown datafile, needs rebuild \nAcked by: uiadmin
(10.1.10.112)

Is this corrupt data somewhere?  I've also tried removing the content of
acknowledge.log, but the problem returns as soon as I ack a new alert.

Thanks for any advice.
-Alan

Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 20:04:18 -0600
From: user-8f2174fd8b66@xymon.invalid
To: user-ae9b8668bcde@xymon.invalid
Subject: Re: [hobbit] Hobbit 4.2 - bb2 ack list has strange date -bug, patch

This turns out to be a bug in Hobbit on x86_64.  Problem appears to be
that a time value read from the acknowledge.log by bbgen is read into a
shorter integer than is allocated as a time_t value (and that allocation
is not initialized)... so sometimes random bits are included, and skew
the time way into the future.

I solved the problem with the following patch:

--- lib/acklog.c.orig   2008-09-04 10:09:02.000000000 -0600
+++ lib/acklog.c        2008-09-04 10:11:59.000000000 -0600
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@
                }
        }

-       acks = (ack_t *) malloc(maxcount*sizeof(ack_t));
+       acks = (ack_t *) calloc(maxcount, sizeof(ack_t));
        ackintime_count = num = 0;

        while (fgets(l, sizeof(l), acklog)) {
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@
                        char *p, *p1, *hobbitdacker = NULL;

                        sscanf(l, "%u\t%d\t%d\t%d\t%s\t%s\t%s\t%n",
-                               (unsigned int *)&acks[num].acktime,
&acks[num].acknum,
+                               (time_t *)&acks[num].acktime,
&acks[num].acknum,
                                &acks[num].duration, &acks[num].acknum2,
                                ackedby, hosttest, color, &c_used);


Alan Sparks wrote:

Trying to get a Hobbit 4.2.0+allinone server on CentOS 4.6 x86_64 running.

I am sometimes, when acknowledging an alert getting a very wrong date
string showing in the ack log at the bottom of the bb2 page.  For instance:
Fri May 24 00:07:50 9630 	den1log43 	disk 		uiadmin (10.1.10.112)
asparks: blown datafile


Where in the world can "year 9630" be coming from?

The acknowledge.log has the following line:
1220503494      525808  60      525808  np_filename_not_used   
den1log43.disk
yellow  asparks: blown datafile, needs rebuild \nAcked by: uiadmin
(10.1.10.112)

Is this corrupt data somewhere?  I've also tried removing the content of
acknowledge.log, but the problem returns as soon as I ack a new alert.

Thanks for any advice.
-Alan

In <user-e9af50b270c9@xymon.invalid> Alan Sparks <user-8f2174fd8b66@xymon.invalid> writes:

This turns out to be a bug in Hobbit on x86_64.  Problem appears to be
that a time value read from the acknowledge.log by bbgen is read into a
shorter integer than is allocated as a time_t value (and that allocation
is not initialized)... so sometimes random bits are included, and skew
the time way into the future.

I solved the problem with the following patch: