Mystery script-file with a bug

henrixd

I have this script-file (/usr/sbin/run-parts), which is not the "real" run-parts (/bin/run-parts or /usr/bin/run-parts), in my system that doesn't seem to belong to any package. Based on what it does, I figured that maybe it's some kind of custom load-balancing script of Time4VPS, especially since it seems to be missing from my other Ubuntu based systems. It started to give me an error after I upgraded my system to Ubuntu 22.04.

Anyway, it has a bug in it, which is how I found it.

ip=$(hostname -i)
RANDOM=${ip//./}

This part gives an error with IPv6 address: 2a02: value too great for base (error token is "2a02").

Should I be worried because of this random mystery file existing in my system?
Where should I report this bug?
What is the best way of fixing it?

This is the whole script if someone is curious:

#!/bin/bash

parameters="$@"
ip=$(hostname -i)
RANDOM=${ip//./}
test -z "${parameters##*/etc/cron.*}" &&
sleep $((RANDOM % 3600))

exec /bin/run-parts "$@"

It just seems to take a random number based on IP-address and run the "real" run-parts with little delay.

Giedrius

Hello, @henrixd

This is our script that is used to randomize some of our automatic tasks(for example, stats usage collection).

However, it should display ipv4, not ipv6 as a result, so we will recheck that.