ScaleIO Gateway Debian Package postinst hangs when using ansible

Question

Hi all, not sure if there is a better place to report a bug. I've run into an interesting issue while deploying scaleio gateway with ansible. Lets start at the root of the issue. I'm installing version 2.5-0.254 on Ubuntu 16.04. The problem point is with /var/lib/dpkg/info/emc-scaleio-gateway.postinst when it initially run, a random password is generated. The following line with associated line number is where the post install hangs. 958     randomPass=$(strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '
'; echo) So why does it hang? Because ansible is trapping signals when the native package management modules are used (apt, yum etc) `strings /dev/urandom` never receives the pipe close from head -n 30 after it closes stdin once 30 lines are read; CPUs proceed to create lots of heat. This method of generating a random password is prone to errors like this. A better option would be to read only the specific number of characters desired from /dev/urandom, or attempt to stop trapping pipes $(trap - PIPE; strings /dev/urandom | grep -o '[[:alnum:]]' | head -n 30 | tr -d '
'; echo) Another solution to this issue is to utilize a wrapper script from ansible and bypass all of the ansible modules for OS package management, but this is counter intuitive at best. Thanks for your time! Etrik

pawelw1 · Answer

Hi Etrik,

Many thanks for catching this - I will let our Dev know to look for similar issues in the future, but please note it's Ansible problem, not the installer itself - I believe it works fine when you install as per Install Guide ;-)

Cheers,

Pawel

PowerFlex

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