killall-is-dangerous

The maintainer script seems to call killall. Since the program terminates processes by name, it may accidentally affect unrelated processes.

Most uses of killall should use invoke-rc.d instead.

The tag is present in Lintian version 2.114.163. That is the most recent version we know about.

We use semantic versions. The patch number is a commit step indicator relative to the 2.114.0 release tag in our Git repository.

You can find the detection logic for this version at commit c1c05b0. For merge requests, please use the latest version in the Lintian check maintainer-scripts/killall.

Visibility: warning

The following 7 source packages in the archive triggered the tag 8 times (in any Lintian version).

We found 1 overrides. The tag performed 88% of the time.

caja-dropbox

[prerm:8]

gvfs

[postinst:8]
[postinst:9]

kscreenlocker

[postinst:14]

nautilus-dropbox

[prerm:8]

notify-osd

[postinst:6]

sirikali

- # "The maintainer script seems to call killall. Since this utility kills processes by name, it may well end up killing unrelated processes. Most uses of killall should use invoke-rc.d instead." sysvinit is not an option here, and the call is against /usr/bin/siricali, which is unlikely to accidentally hit another process.
[preinst:7]

xscreensaver

[prerm:7]

# "The maintainer script seems to call killall. Since this utility kills processes by name, it may well end up killing unrelated processes. Most uses of killall should use invoke-rc.d instead." sysvinit is not an option here, and the call is against /usr/bin/siricali, which is unlikely to accidentally hit another process.