---
id: "bug-1710"
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_hello", "silent-failure", "cli-ux-audit"]
related: []
fix_commits: ["da1a663f"]
legacy: true
gitea_issue: 305
gitea_synced_status: "fixed"
gitea_synced_hash: "3805fa3a8bb8"
---

# bug-1710: cmd_hello with -c 0, a negative count, or a non-numeric value (all yield count<=0 from unchecked…

## Description
cmd_hello with -c 0, a negative count, or a non-numeric value (all yield count<=0 from unchecked atoi()) sends zero hellos (the while(count>0) loop body never runs) but still returns the still-zero-initialized rc, reporting success even though nothing was sent.

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

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

## Root cause
No validation that count is >=1 before entering the loop; the initial success value is never overwritten when the loop body never executes.

## Fix
hello's -c is parsed with cmdutil_parse_long() and must be >= 1; 0, negative or non-numeric is a usage error.

## Verification
- Test: test_hello_nonpositive_count_rejected in src/harness/testsuite/test_test_cli.c: RED before the fix (exit 0, nothing sent), GREEN after
- 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)._