Is this bug causing you small problems or big problems?

If you really want it fixed, indicate here:

If you replace the occurence of %WIKIWEBLIST% in the twiki.tmpl with a search (e.g. %SEARCH{ "SAUSAGE" }% then twiki hangs the server, terminally. The apache server has to be restarted quickly, or it runs the risk of locking up the whole server machine.

Note that the way this was discovered was that Vito set the WIKIWEBLIST variable in his WebPreferences topic to a %SEARCH; so it is quite likely that this could happen on any site where users can set variables.

We were unable to debug this any further.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 28 Feb 2004

Boing: Note that since we are collecting DOS vulnerabilities, this is another one (unrelated to Apache 2).

Confirned this still happens in build 1572 (set WIKIWEBLIST to %SEARCH{"SAUSAGE"}% in Sandbox.WebPreferences). Assigned to Peter as he's the SEARCH guru, and has most chance of working out the problem.

See also: See also: Searched: CairoBugsInSearch

-- CrawfordCurrie - 12 Jul 2004

I would like to defer this fix to Dakar. Not so good for pulic TWikis, but no big issue for TWikis on Intranets.

-- PeterThoeny - 14 Aug 2004

I just hit this trying to embed a backlink search

%SEARCH{"%SPACEDTOPIC$" scope="text" regex="on" excludetopic="%TOPIC%"}%

Is there another way to do it?

-- MartinCleaver - 01 Oct 2004

I added a recent changes search to WebLeftBar and it stalled the apache process.

Add something like

%SEARCH{ ".*" regex="on" nosearch="on" nototal="on" limit="%URLPARAM{"limit" default="5"}%"
 excludetopic="WebStatistics" reverse="on" order="modified" web="Main" format="$web.$topic <br />"}%

null: Deep recursion on subroutine "TWiki::handleCommonTags" at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki/Search.pm line 476.
null: Deep recursion on subroutine "TWiki::handleInternalTags" at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 3148.
null: Deep recursion on subroutine "TWiki::handleInternalTags" at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2109.
null: Deep recursion on subroutine "TWiki::handleInternalTags" at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2116.
null: Deep recursion on subroutine "TWiki::handleInternalTags" at /var/www/twiki/lib/TWiki.pm line 2109.
[...]

The apache process hangs and eats CPU time.

-- MatthiasWientapper - 03 Oct 2004

Fixed in DevelopBranch. The TestCases web contains a WebLeftBar that has the problem (so the tests can't be run on Cairo.... bah!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 13 Feb 2005

We hit the same problem today, as one of our users put a search in his WebLeftBar. I take it that there will be no fix for Cairo, or?

-- SteffenPoulsen - 10 May 2005

I started fixing it for Cairo, a long time ago, but I was changing so much code that it became Dakar. So no, I don't have a fix for Cairo.

-- CrawfordCurrie - 11 May 2005

That's OK by me - I just wanted to be sure there wasn't a fix around I guess this is a serious issue for public sites (DOS), though, perhaps it should be promoted to a "known issue" in KnownIssuesOfTWiki01Sep2004? (The missing fix / low priority might count against this, I realize).

-- SteffenPoulsen - 11 May 2005