Re: 2.6.31-rc2: BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference

From: Rafael J. Wysocki
Date: Wed Jul 22 2009 - 16:28:21 EST


On Monday 20 July 2009, Thomas Meyer wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 12.07.2009, 22:26 +0200 schrieb Jiri Slaby:
> > On 07/12/2009 07:30 PM, Parag Warudkar wrote:
> > > static void selinux_write_opts(struct seq_file *m,
> > > 1012 struct security_mnt_opts *opts)
> > > 1013 {
> > > 1014 int i;
> > > 1015 char *prefix;
> > > 1016
> > > 1017 for (i = 0; i < opts->num_mnt_opts; i++) {
> > > 1018 char *has_comma;
> > > 1019
> > > 1020 if (opts->mnt_opts[i])
> > > 1021 has_comma = strchr(opts->mnt_opts[i], ',');
> > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > > And that is a NULL pointer dereference - but we just checked for
> > > opts->mnt_opts[i] for not NULL.
> >
> > Note, that there is not a NULL dereference. It dereferences 0x40 which
> > came in as %rdi. Looks like somebody assigned garbage in there.
> >
> > Or a single bit mem error. Is memtest OK with this machine?
> Yes it ran fine for one cycle (about 2:15 hours).
>
> Maybe memory in acpi S3 is not so stable? Is this possible?

Generally, it is, but I haven't seen it happen yet. In theory, if the memory
chips are not refreshed appropriately while suspended, something like this may
happen.

Best,
Rafael
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