Re: Proper /proc/pid/cmdline behavior when command line is corrupt?

From: Edward Falk
Date: Fri Sep 08 2006 - 13:14:05 EST


Jan Engelhardt wrote:
Hi Edward,

that the environment buffer is assumed to immediately follow the
command line buffer.


The environment buffer is not assumed to be there, it is _known_ to come right
after the argument string, because that is how the kernel sets it up on execve
(for x86 at least).

Is that in a spec somewhere? Otherwise, I would argue that it isn't _known_ to come right after the argument string, it just _happens_ to come right after the argument string. This could change in future kernels.



I'm currently working on a patch that removes the one page limit on
the returned command line buffer but I'm not convinced I should
retain this behavior.


I think yes. proc_pid_cmdline() has these lines:

len = mm->arg_end - mm->arg_start
* if (len > PAGE_SIZE)
* len = PAGE_SIZE;
res = access_process_vm(task, mm->arg_start, buffer, len, 0);


and @buffer is allocated in the caller as only one page:

True, but that's an arbitrary limitation which I'm in the process of removing. I have a new version of proc_pid_cmdline() which will return the entire commandline buffer no matter what its length. If the grab-more-data-from-environment-buffer behavior is actually broken, I'd rather not propagate it to the new code.

-ed falk
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