Re: [PATCH] sysctl: fix min/max handling in__do_proc_doulongvec_minmax()

From: AmÃrico Wang
Date: Fri Oct 08 2010 - 12:20:40 EST


On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 12:38:22PM -0700, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>> On Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:59:03 +0200
>> Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>> Thats fine by me, thanks Eric.
>>>
>>> Andrew, please remove previous patch from your tree and replace it by
>>> following one :
>>>
>>> [PATCH v2] sysctl: fix min/max handling in __do_proc_doulongvec_minmax()
>>>
>>> When proc_doulongvec_minmax() is used with an array of longs,
>>> and no min/max check requested (.extra1 or .extra2 being NULL), we
>>> dereference a NULL pointer for the second element of the array.
>>>
>>> Noticed while doing some changes in network stack for the "16TB problem"
>>>
>>> Fix is to not change min & max pointers in
>>> __do_proc_doulongvec_minmax(), so that all elements of the vector share
>>> an unique min/max limit, like proc_dointvec_minmax().
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@xxxxxxxxx>
>>> ---
>>> kernel/sysctl.c | 2 +-
>>> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>
>>> diff --git a/kernel/sysctl.c b/kernel/sysctl.c
>>> index f88552c..8e45451 100644
>>> --- a/kernel/sysctl.c
>>> +++ b/kernel/sysctl.c
>>> @@ -2485,7 +2485,7 @@ static int __do_proc_doulongvec_minmax(void *data, struct ctl_table *table, int
>>> kbuf[left] = 0;
>>> }
>>>
>>> - for (; left && vleft--; i++, min++, max++, first=0) {
>>> + for (; left && vleft--; i++, first=0) {
>>> unsigned long val;
>>>
>>> if (write) {
>>
>> Did we check to see whether any present callers are passing in pointers
>> to arrays of min/max values?
>
>In 2.6.36 there are not any callers that pass in a vector of anything, I
>don't know about linux-next. It looks to me like incrementing min and
>max was simply a bug.
>

Agreed, I checked them too.

>> I wonder if there's any documentation for this interface which just
>> became wrong.
>
>Or it just became right. Clearly no one has been expecting min
>and max to be vectors.
>

I think we need to document this before we rewrite the code.

--
Live like a child, think like the god.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/