Re: Linux 2.6.38-rc4 (hysdn: BUG)

[Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>]

On Wed, 9 Feb 2011 11:44:00 -0800 Linus Torvalds wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 9:24 AM, Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com> wrote:
> >
> > on x86_64.  no HYSDN hardware found (correct).
> > Nearly allmodconfig.
> >
> >
> > [   65.397577] HYSDN: module Rev: 1.6.6.6 loaded
> > [   65.397584] HYSDN: network interface Rev: 1.8.6.4
> > [   65.398057] HYSDN: 0 card(s) found.
> > [   65.398121] BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at ffffffffa06c99f0
> > [   65.398269] IP: [<ffffffffa06c68ba>] hysdn_getrev+0x2e/0x50 [hysdn]
> > [   65.398379] PGD 1a14067 PUD 1a18063 PMD 6f6c1067 PTE 800000006ce8c161
> > [   65.398613] Oops: 0003 [#1] SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC
> > [   65.400030]
> > [   65.400030] Pid: 2497, comm: modprobe Not tainted 2.6.38-rc4 #1 0TY565/OptiPlex 745
> > [   65.400030] RIP: 0010:[<ffffffffa06c68ba>]  [<ffffffffa06c68ba>] hysdn_getrev+0x2e/0x50 [hysdn]
> > [   65.400030] RSP: 0018:ffff88006eec1e68  EFLAGS: 00010206
> > [   65.400030] RAX: ffffffffa06c99f1 RBX: ffffffffa06c99e9 RCX: ffff88007c4159a0
> 
> The instruction sequence decodes to
> 
>   1e:	be 24 00 00 00       	mov    $0x24,%esi
>   23:	48 89 df             	mov    %rbx,%rdi
>   26:	e8 5b 39 c0 e0       	callq  0xffffffffe0c03986
>   2b:*	c6 40 ff 00          	movb   $0x0,-0x1(%rax)     <-- trapping instruction
> 
> which seems to be this
> 
>                 p = strchr(rev, '$');
>                 *--p = 0;
> 
> code. And yes, it's total crap, because while "p" and "rev" are "char
> *", the string that is passed in is actually of type "const char *",
> so that function is seriously broken. It's also seriously broken to
> not test that "p" is non-NULL - the function would just break if there
> is a colon in the string but not a '$'.
> 
> And hysdn_procconf_init() passes in a constant string to the thing:
> 
>     static char *hysdn_procconf_revision = "$Revision: 1.8.6.4 $";
> 
> What happens is that it breaks when we mark the constant section as
> read-only, because you have CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA enabled.
> 
> So the fix seems to be to
>  - fix the prototype for hysdn_getrev() to not have "const".
>  - fix hysdn_procconf_init() to not pass in a constant string to it
> 
> The minimal patch would appear to be something like the appended. UNTESTED!

for your patch:

Tested-and-acked-by: Randy Dunlap <randy.dunlap@oracle.com>

> Btw, all of this code seems to go back to before the git history even
> started, so it doesn't seem to be new. I assume you haven't tried
> booting these all-module kernels before? Or is it just the
> DEBUG_RODATA thing that is new for you?

Neither is new.  I tested and reported many-modules on 2.6.37-rc1 and
reported these 2 bugs:

https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22912
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22882

and that was with CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA=y.
I don't know how hysdn was missed at that time.

---
~Randy
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