328739 - duplicates.cgi: Use of uninitialized value in string ne at (eval 23) line 31.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Bugzilla :: Reporting/Charting, defect)

Description

[Jan Janousek]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.7.12-1.3.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050922 Fedora/1.7.12-1.3.1

Running collectstats.pl either as a cron job or manually produces an error message (of course a date/time can differ):

[Mon Feb 27 00:05:25 2006] duplicates.cgi: Use of uninitialized value in string ne at (eval 23) line 31.

Beyond this error message I do not see any buggy behaviour.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. run collectstats.pl manually, or
2. let cron run collectstats.pl as suggested in <http://www.bugzilla.org/docs/2.20/html/extraconfig.html#AEN628>.
Actual Results:  
An error message appears/is sent by cron (a date/time can differ):

[Mon Feb 27 00:05:25 2006] duplicates.cgi: Use of uninitialized value in string ne at (eval 23) line 31.

Expected Results:  
No error message should appear.

System: Fedora Core 3
CGI Version: 3.17 (CPAN latest)
Bugzilla CVS Tag: BUGZILLA-2_20_1 (with some minor adjustments)

The message started to appear after I upgraded Bugzilla to CVS Tag BUGZILLA-2_20_1 and/or required Perl modules to the newest CPAN versions. So it could be possible something changed in the (non-Bugzilla) module CGI.pm (see below)...

I tried to track the source of this message down. My way started in collectstats.pl. It led through duplicates.cgi where a line 276:

print $cgi->header($format->{'ctype'});

... revealed as a source of the message. It continued to Bugzilla/CGI.pm where a line 310:

    return $self->SUPER::header(@_) || "";

... calls a SUPER's method header. I would say the line should look like this:

    return($self->SUPER::header(@_) || "");

... as 'return' tights more than '||' but both variants produce the message. I continued to the (non-Bugzilla) module CGI.pm method header where I lost the track.

Comment 1

[:glob ✱]

perl's CGI.pm expects $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'} to be set and will throw this error if it isn't, so that's my bet.

we should probably set it in collectstats.pl

Comment 2

[Max Kanat-Alexander]

Actually, the thing we really need to do is make sure that non-CGI scripts don't use CGI.pm. It causes other errors also, anyhow.

Comment 3

[Frédéric Buclin]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Actually, the thing we really need to do is make sure that non-CGI scripts
> don't use CGI.pm. It causes other errors also, anyhow.
> 

I fully agree. That's why I wrote bug 315605. And I think Search.pm has to be fixed too to stop requiring a CGI object.

Comment 4

[Jan Janousek]

(In reply to comment #1)
> perl's CGI.pm expects $ENV{'HTTP_USER_AGENT'} to be set and will throw this
> error if it isn't, so that's my bet.
> 
> we should probably set it in collectstats.pl

CGI.pm (3.17) in sub header does not define $charset in all cases. Then the line 1438 tests $charset ne ''.

So a dirty patch for now could be to replace the line 1438 in CGI.pm:

    $type .= "; charset=$charset" if $type ne '' and $type !~ /\bcharset\b/ and $charset ne '';

... by ('and defined $charset' added):

    $type .= "; charset=$charset" if $type ne '' and $type !~ /\bcharset\b/ and defined $charset and $charset ne '';

Comment 5

[Bruce Wilson]

I'm experiencing the same thing.  I tried to find line 1438 in Bugzilla\CGI.pm, but mine only goes to 310 lines.  Oddly, collectstats.pl still seems to be collecting data.

Comment 6

[Bruce Wilson]

OK, it feels like I'm trying to repair a fine wristwatch with a ball-peen hammer, but I'll contribute what I can to this discussion.

I found that commenting out line 1438 in my CGI.pm (the one outside the Bugzilla install) has eliminated the error.  I guess this qualifies as a workaround, at least for those who have no need of alternate charsets.

If someone was willing to point me in the right direction, I'd be happy to build a patch for this in the right place.  Should Bugzilla/CGI.pm force charset to be defined?

Comment 7

[Frédéric Buclin]

I cannot reproduce this problem on Bugzilla 3.0.9. And collectstats.pl doesn't call duplicates.cgi anymore since Bugzilla 3.4, see bug 380756. WFM