gemini-cli - 💡(How to fix) Fix Race condition in background shell command cleanup [1 comments, 2 participants]

What happened?

Temporary files and directories used for pgrep/background process tracking are deleted in a finally block as soon as the main execution loop returns, even if the process is moved to the background.

What did you expect to happen?

Temporary resources should persist as long as the background process needs them, or be managed by a centralized lifecycle service that understands background execution.

Client Information

<details> <summary>Client Information</summary>

OS: linux Date: Sunday, May 10, 2026 Gemini CLI: 0.42.0-nightly

</details>

Login information

Automated audit with Gemini CLI.

Anything else we need to know?

File: packages/core/src/tools/shell.ts, Lines 625, 768. When is_background is true, execute returns early, triggering finally which unlinks tempFilePath and removes tempDir while the background process might still be starting or finishing.

Severity: Medium Area: area/core