docker / docker/cli

--cidfile fails if file exists even if empty

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#5,954 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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kind/enhancement status/0-triage
Dominant language
Go
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Description

Description

The best practice when creating a temporary file is not only to generate a filename of a file that does not already exist, but also to create/open the file with O_EXCL, to avoid TOCTOU, typically that's what mkstemp(3) does.
Unfortunately, docker-run's --cidfile prevents from passing it a safe temporary file, because docker-run will fail if the given file merely exists.

Reproduce
t=$(mktemp)
docker run --rm --cidfile=$t debian
Expected behavior

docker-run should fail only if the file given as --cidfile contains a PID (even better, check if the PID is alive by using kill(the_pid, 0) which is designed for that)

docker version
Client:
 Version:           20.10.24+dfsg1
 API version:       1.41
 Go version:        go1.19.8
 Git commit:        297e128
 Built:             Sat Oct 12 15:19:49 2024
 OS/Arch:           linux/amd64
 Context:           default
 Experimental:      true

Server:
 Engine:
  Version:          20.10.5+dfsg1
  API version:      1.41 (minimum version 1.12)
  Go version:       go1.15.15
  Git commit:       363e9a8
  Built:            Mon May 30 18:34:49 2022
  OS/Arch:          linux/amd64
  Experimental:     false
 containerd:
  Version:          1.6.20~ds1
  GitCommit:        1.6.20~ds1-1+deb12u1
 runc:
  Version:          1.1.5+ds1
  GitCommit:        1.1.5+ds1-1+deb12u1
 docker-init:
  Version:          0.19.0
  GitCommit:
docker info
too much identifying info
Additional Info

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start at the docker run --cidfile handling and reproduce the reported case with a path created by mktemp. Done means an existing empty cidfile no longer causes failure, while a cidfile containing a PID retains the intended failure behavior; add or update coverage for these cases where the CLI tests for this entry point are located.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
docker, go
Domain
cli
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
68/100

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