Re: [PATCH] nfs: Don't deref potentially NULL pointer returned bystrsep

From: Jesper Juhl
Date: Mon Jul 04 2011 - 05:13:45 EST


On Sun, 3 Jul 2011, Chuck Lever wrote:

>
> On Jul 3, 2011, at 3:40 AM, Jesper Juhl wrote:
>
> > In fs/nfs/nfsroot.c:root_nfs_parse_options() we call strsep(), which
> > may return NULL, but we do not test the return value before
> > dereferencing the pointer.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Jesper Juhl <jj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > fs/nfs/nfsroot.c | 2 ++
> > 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> >
> > Compile tested only.
> >
> > diff --git a/fs/nfs/nfsroot.c b/fs/nfs/nfsroot.c
> > index c4744e1..b6ac860 100644
> > --- a/fs/nfs/nfsroot.c
> > +++ b/fs/nfs/nfsroot.c
> > @@ -191,6 +191,8 @@ static int __init root_nfs_parse_options(char *incoming, char *exppath,
> > * Set the NFS remote path
> > */
> > p = strsep(&incoming, ",");
> > + if (!p)
> > + return -1;
>
> strsep() may return NULL only if the value of "incoming" is NULL. But
> callers ensure that "incoming" always contains the address of a fixed
> buffer. Thus if strsep() returns NULL here there is some kind of
> programming error; it's not the result of invalid input.
>
> Do you have a reproducible test case to make this fail?
>
Nope. I simply spotted the unchecked strsep() call and thought that it
would be better to be defensive and check it in case callers change in the
future and a bug creeps in that causes a NULL incoming to be passed.
Perhaps a BUG_ON(!incoming) would be better - or perhaps just forget about
it.

--
Jesper Juhl <jj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> http://www.chaosbits.net/
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