Clipboard size limit

[wincent]

Describe the bug

Stuff copied to the clipboard via kitty +kitten clipboard or an explicit OSC 52 escape sequence created with printf fails silently above a certain size.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

Use seq to generate a large chunk of output to see where copies start failing:

1. seq 1 914979 | kitty +kitten clipboard and inspect clipboard — sequence is there.
2. seq 1 914980 | kitty +kitten clipboard and inspect clipboard — copy failed silently.
3. seq 1 10000000 | pbcopy (ie. pipe to macOS clipboard tool) and inspect clipboard — even very large sequence is there.

Alternative, in Bash:

seq 1 914979 | printf "\e]52;c;%s\a" "$(cat - | openssl base64 -A)" # sequence gets copied
seq 1 914980 | printf "\e]52;c;%s\a" "$(cat - | openssl base64 -A)" # sequence does not get copied

Environment details

kitty 0.22.2 created by Kovid Goyal
Darwin gregorys-mbp 20.5.0 Darwin Kernel Version 20.5.0: Sat May  8 05:10:31 PDT 2021; root:xnu-7195.121.3~9/RELEASE_ARM64_T8101 arm64
ProductName:	macOS ProductVersion:	11.4 BuildVersion:	20F71
Loaded config files:
  /Users/wincent/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

Config options different from defaults:
active_tab_font_style     (False, False)
active_tab_title_template  « {fmt.bold}{title}{fmt.nobold} » 
disable_ligatures         2
enable_audio_bell         False
font_family               Source Code Pro
font_size                 12.0
hide_window_decorations   1
inactive_tab_font_style   (False, True)
tab_bar_edge              1
tab_bar_style             separator
tab_separator             │
tab_title_template           {title}   
Added mouse actions:
	 cmd+b1 repeat ungrabbed KeyAction('mouse_click_url')
	 cmd+b1 repeat grabbed KeyAction('mouse_click_url')
Added shortcuts:
	ctrl+i KeyAction('send_text', ('application', b'H'))
Colors:
	active_tab_background     #40383a   
	active_tab_foreground     #ffffff   
	inactive_tab_background   #1e1a1a   
	inactive_tab_foreground   #b5b5b4   
	tab_bar_background        #1e1a1a   

[kovidgoyal]

There is an 8MB limit. Otherwise random programs running on remote
computers could DOS your local machine.

[wincent]

Doesn't 8 MB strike you as a little bit small? I'm typing this on a laptop with 2,000x that amount of physical RAM.

And they're not really "random" programs though, are they? They are programs that I chose to run, presumably because I trust them. Consider programs on the local machine too: they also could allocate arbitrary amounts of memory and "DOS" my machine, but I chose to run them.

[kovidgoyal]

On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 03:43:35AM -0700, Greg Hurrell wrote: Doesn't 8 MB strike you as a little bit small? I'm typing this on a laptop with 2,000x that amount of physical RAM.

No it doesnt. You probably have a browser running that is using 90% of that RAM :) On a more serious note, what limit would you suggest?

And they're not really "random" programs though, are they? They are programs that I chose to run, presumably because I trust them. Consider programs on the local machine too: they _also_ could allocate arbitrary amounts of memory and "DOS" my machine, but I chose to run them.

While I certainly do trust the software on my local machine, I do not trust the software on random machines I ssh into.

[wincent]

On a more serious note, what limit would you suggest?

🤷 — 10x the current limit?

[kovidgoyal]

What is your usecase for copying 80MB of text via the clipboard? Downloading logs?

[wincent]

It could be logs, the output of a program, a debugging session in a REPL etc... I regularly want to capture a large amount of text from the terminal for sharing (for example, I might paste it into a private Gist). And this isn't on "random" machines. It's on machines that I regularly do development work on; if the systems are compromised, then the ability to inflate my local clipboard's memory footprint are the least of my concerns.

I just plucked the 10x figure out of the air because any number I say is going to be abritrary, but what I don't want is thinking that I've captured all the information when I actually haven't because the limit is applied silently. For example:

1. Imagine I copy a large hunk of output, but less then 8 MB, and stick it in a Gist.
2. I continue debugging, and copy a larger hunk, this time just more than 8 MB, and paste into a Gist.

In this scenario, I think I've captured two distinct sets of data, but I've actually captured the first one twice (because the second one never overwrote the previous clipboard contents), and because we're talking about logs which might look the same at first glance, I might not notice the information loss. And then I disconnect from the server, and the information is gone...

Now, I know I could redirect this kind of thing to a file (if I have the presence of mind to do that before running the command that generated the output), and then scp it somewhere else. But the simplicity of just being able to copy/paste is pretty awesome if you can rely on it.

[kovidgoyal]

Well, I am willing to make an option for it, so you can set your own
limit.

[wincent]

Nice. Thanks @kovidgoyal!