Re: [PATCH] PC300 update

From: Russell King
Date: Thu Jan 29 2004 - 04:04:05 EST


On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:06:25PM -0200, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> On Wed, 28 Jan 2004, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > - Mark pci_device_id list with __devinitdata
> >
> > This is bogus and can crash the kernel if you're unlucky.
>
> Other wan drivers are doing the same:
>
> [marcelo@logos wan]$ grep __devinitdata *
> farsync.c:static char *type_strings[] __devinitdata = {
> wanxl.c:static struct pci_device_id wanxl_pci_tbl[] __devinitdata = {
>
> I believe a handful of others are using "__devinitdata". How can the
> kernel crash because of this? Who will try to touch the data?

It is particularly notable when someone inserts a Cardbus device. A
new PCI device is added, and we scan all drivers looking for a match
using the PCI ID tables.

If _any_ PCI ID table which is part registered as part of a driver is
marked using __devinitdata or __initdata, this will either cause the
kernel to read invalid data (possibly entering a long loop) or oops.

--
Russell King
Linux kernel 2.6 ARM Linux - http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/
maintainer of: 2.6 PCMCIA - http://pcmcia.arm.linux.org.uk/
2.6 Serial core
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