gnome-session crashes after nmap port scan
Hi,
I've found that using nmap with a particular option to portscan a Sol 8/9 machine with a user logged into a Gnome desktop causes the gnome-session process to seg fault.
Can anyone else suggest a fix or workaround for this? Or even just reproduce it?
Using nmap against a Solaris 8 or 9 box, with a user logged into a Gnome desktop:
<b>nmap -sV -p <port> <host></b>
<b><port></b> is the gnome-session port opened on the target machine <b><host></b>. It's unfixed, but somewhere above port 32000. Note that the <b>-sV</b> option turns on version detection in nmap, and it's this option that causes gnome-session to crash. While the scan is in progress, Gnome will throw an error box saying:
'<i>The GNOME Session Manager (process <b><pid></b>) has crashed due to a fatal error (Segmentation Fault).
When you close this dialog, all applications will close and your session will exit. Please save all your files before closing this dialog.</i>'
(where <b><i><pid></i></b> is the process ID of gnome-session.)
As long as the dialogue isn't acknowledged, one can continue working, but as soon as it is, the desktop exits and throws many errors of the form '<i>utmp_update(13649): (ID 845426 user.error) Wrong number of arguments or invalid user</i>' into the messages file. There is nothing else written to the logs, and no coredump produced.
This has been experienced with Sol 8, Gnome 2.0.0 and Sol 9, Gnome 2.0.2. nmap 3.50 and 3.55.
This came to light after a departmental nmap scan and we noticed this happening across all our workstations. Two of them (one running Sol 8, the other running 9) didn't recover after Gnome crashed and had to have the OS reinstalled, so we're treating it as a serious problem.
Any clues or suggestions?
