---
id: "bug-1708"
status: "fixed"
status_updated: "2026-09-28"
status_note: ""
component: "controller"
severity: "unknown"
timestamp: "2026-08-26T09:32:18Z"
last_seen: "2026-09-19T09:00:00Z"
occurrences: 1
files: ["src/harness/test.c"]
tags: ["controller", "testsuite", "xce_test", "cmd_jobkill", "silent-failure", "cli-ux-audit"]
related: []
fix_commits: ["da1a663f"]
legacy: true
gitea_issue: 303
gitea_synced_status: "fixed"
gitea_synced_hash: "3b44e52455e4"
---

# bug-1708: cmd_jobkill's `-s <signo>` is parsed via unchecked atoi(); a non-numeric value (e.g

## Description
cmd_jobkill's `-s <signo>` is parsed via unchecked atoi(); a non-numeric value (e.g. a plausible typo of the symbolic name `SIGKILL` instead of `9`) silently becomes signo=0 (POSIX null signal, delivers nothing), yet the command still prints "Job <id> signaled" as if it succeeded.

## Environment
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Reproduction
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Root cause
No validation that -s's argument is numeric/nonzero before using it and reporting success.

## Fix
jobkill's -s is parsed with cmdutil_parse_long() and must be a signal number 1..NSIG-1; anything else is a usage error before any RPC.

## Verification
- Test: test_jobkill_non_numeric_signal_rejected in src/harness/testsuite/test_test_cli.c: RED before the fix (-s SIGKILL accepted and sent), GREEN after; plus the parse_long cases in src/harness/testsuite/test_cmdutil.c
- Suites: harness 6/6 (asan): harness_unit_test 141/0, cmdutil 14/0, resval_typeresolve 7/0, joblist_display 22/0, join_worker_args 7/0, listrow_json 12/0
- Live: n/a; xce_test is a client tool and every case above runs without a controller

## References
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._