Bug ID 585043: Question mark prevents TMSH from loading configuration file

Last Modified: Apr 28, 2025

Affected Product(s):
BIG-IP All(all modules)

Known Affected Versions:
12.1.0, 12.1.0 HF1, 12.1.0 HF2, 12.1.1, 12.1.1 HF1, 12.1.1 HF2, 12.1.2, 12.1.2 HF1, 12.1.2 HF2, 12.1.3, 12.1.3.1, 12.1.3.2, 12.1.3.3, 12.1.3.4, 12.1.3.5, 12.1.3.6, 12.1.3.7, 12.1.4, 12.1.4.1, 12.1.5, 12.1.5.1, 12.1.5.2, 12.1.5.3, 12.1.6, 13.0.0, 13.0.0 HF1, 13.0.0 HF2, 13.0.0 HF3, 13.0.1

Fixed In:
13.1.0

Opened: Apr 03, 2016

Severity: 3-Major

Symptoms

When loading system configuration for TMSH, if some properties have the value ? (question mark), TMSH fails to complete the loading.

Impact

TMSH fails to load system configuration file

Conditions

-- Use TMSH to load configuration. -- string, vector of string properties have ? as value. -- ? is the stand-alone value. That is, ? has no characters before or after it and it is not part of a string.

Workaround

None.

Fix Information

TMSH now considers escaped question mark as a literal character if the question mark is explicitly escaped (i.e., using quotes, backslash, etc.). Loading system configuration succeeds if all question marks are properly escaped. Escaped question mark now stops displaying help messages in the TMSH, because a literal question mark should not have any special meaning attached to it. This fix does not affect the ways question marks are stored in the TMSH configuration files. Loading existing system configuration files should work properly.

Behavior Change

TMSH now considers escaped question mark as a literal character if the question mark is explicitly escaped (i.e., using quotes, backslash, etc.), and will successfully load that system configuration if all question marks are properly escaped.

Guides & references

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