Hi Tim
I could not get your code to compile.


My simpler C version of my test case below

What I woudl suggest is, could this be added to wget testsuite? some additional tests

gcc -O2 -Wall -Wextra -Wpedantic -o main wget_main.c
#include <stdlib.h>
int main (void)
{
    const char * str = "timeout -k 26s 25s wget http://bbc.com/";
    int result = system(str);
 
    return result;
}

I can only reproduce it with fork before execve and when using the "timeout" command:

#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/wait.h>

int main() {
    char *args[] = {
        "timeout", "-k", "26s", "25s",
        "wget", "-O", "test.html", "http://example.com", NULL
    };
    int pid = fork();
    if (pid < 0) {
        perror("fork");
        return 1;
    } else if (pid == 0) {
        execvp(args[0], args);
        perror("execvp");
        return 1;
    } else {
        wait(NULL);
        perror("wait");
    }
    return 0;
}

It appears that "timeout" is creating a new process group:

977           if (foreground_pgrp != -1 && foreground_pgrp != getpgrp ())
(gdb) p foreground_pgrp
$4 = 12905   # pidof wrapper
(gdb) p (int)getpgrp()
$5 = 12906   # pidof timeout

Suggested workarounds:
- Use "timeout --foreground" or,
- Add the "-o-" option to "wget" to force logging to stdout.

Given the special behavior of "timeout", isn't this "working as intended"?

The 'timeout' command puts wget into background.

If you either leave it away or use --foreground with 'timeout', you won't see wget-log. You can use --timeout=25 for wget if you need a timeout.

But that's a work-around. The issue is that wget behaves contrary to the manual which says "--background: If no output file is specified via the -o, output is redirected to wget-log".

I re-open the issue.

"&" is a special shell character which causes a program to go to the background. When you execute

    wget https://example.com/dpp&key

it will actually be interpreted as:

    wget https://example.com/dpp &
    key

which will execute "wget https://example.com/foo" to download that URL in the background (due to "&"). After that it will execute the command "key" (which it cannot find in your case).

To have the intended effect of downloading that particular URL, quote your URL instead such that the special shell characters are not intepreted:

    wget "https://example.com/dpp&key"

See also https://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/quoting.html

This was already fixed in wget 1.19.3, are you sure that you are using this (or a newer) version?

You really have to provide more details on your environment and the steps to reproduce. See for example the original description.

Thanks, applied.

From the mailing list (21./22.5.2017):

If you use an explicit logfile (-o / --output-file), that code for
creating 'wget-log' isn't triggered.

It is a documented behavior, see 'man wget':
"       -b
       --background
           Go to background immediately after startup.  If no output
file is specified via the -o, output is redirected to wget-log.
"

Maybe the implementation was buggy and didn't match the docs - and since 1.19 it has been fixed ?

Anyways, we want to keep backward compatibility and if that change breaks existing scripts, we should revert the change and change the docs (I am sure people dislike that as well ;-)).

an additional comment from a Debian user:

--8<--
This has hit many and is already reported in several distributions, but not in Debian yet.

Since 1.19, when run in the background, even with --quiet, wget creates a log file wget-log in the current directory, which is normally empty.
If wget-log exists, it creates wget-log.1, and so on.

The workaround is to use -o /dev/null, but this changed behaviour breaks existing scripts and is undocumented.
--8<--
https://bugs.debian.org/874590