From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754159Ab1BDEnJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Feb 2011 23:43:09 -0500 Received: from 74-93-104-97-Washington.hfc.comcastbusiness.net ([74.93.104.97]:52440 "EHLO sunset.davemloft.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753704Ab1BDEnH (ORCPT ); Thu, 3 Feb 2011 23:43:07 -0500 Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 20:43:41 -0800 (PST) Message-Id: <20110203.204341.193732974.davem@davemloft.net> To: julia@diku.dk Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, paul.moore@hp.com, kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] include/net/genetlink.h: Allow genlmsg_cancel to accept a NULL argument From: David Miller In-Reply-To: References: <20110201.145410.115936566.davem@davemloft.net> X-Mailer: Mew version 6.3 on Emacs 23.1 / Mule 6.0 (HANACHIRUSATO) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org From: Julia Lawall Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 07:17:29 +0100 (CET) > This pattern occurred in eg: > > net/netlabel/netlabel_unlabeled.c > > in the function netlbl_unlabel_staticlist_gen and in other netlabel code, > as well as in net/wireless/nl80211.c, but with the function nl80211hdr_put > instead of genlmsg_put. I submitted patches for all of these cases, so > that is perhaps why you don't see them. But someone suggested to change > genlmsg_cancel as well, to be as permissive as nlmsg_cancel. > > For nlmsg_cancel, there are two occurrences in > net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_netlink.c where nlmsg_cancel is reachable with > the second argument NULL. > > For nlmsg_cancel the ability to accept NULL as a second argument comes > from the fact that it only calls nlmsg_trim, which does nothing if NULL is > the second argument. nlmsg_trim is also called by nla_nest_cancel. There > are many calls to nla_nest_cancel with NULL as the second argument in the > directory net/sched, for example in the function gred_dump in > net/sched/sch_gred.c. net/sched also contains a call to nlmsg_trim with > NULL as the second argument, in the function flow_dump, in > net/sched/cls_flow.c. > > The whole thing seems somewhat sloppy. I'm sure that all of the > above-cited occurrences could be rewritten as outlined above to skip over > the cancel/trim function. Thanks for the analysis Julia. I think the only safe thing to do in net-2.6 and -stable is to add the NULL check to genlmsg_cancel() as your patch did. I we later want to move things such that, consistently, we never call *nlmsg_cancel() with a NULL second arg, that's fine. I'll apply your genlmsg_cancel() patch, thanks Julia.