NS-014
observedno-signal-at-all
A privilege prompt with nowhere to appear hangs instead of failing
- reads as
- A deploy step produces no output and does not return. Conclusion drawn: the operation is slow, or the network is stalling.
- actually
- The command needed a password. There is no terminal to prompt on, so it waits indefinitely. No error, no exit code, no timeout.
- blind because
- Exit codes only exist for processes that exit. An instrument that reads return status has nothing at all to read, and silence resembles work in progress.
- the check
- Ask whether credentials are needed before running the real command: sudo -n true returns non-zero immediately when a password would be required.
- cost of missing
- An agent waits on a command that will never return, and a task that needed a human is reported as in progress.
- mitigation
- Wrap anything that might prompt in a timeout, so a hang converts into a failure you can observe.
- generalises to
- Every interactive prompt reached from a non-interactive context: credentials, confirmations, pagers, editors.