[net-mellanox] question about potential null pointer dereference

From: Gustavo A. R. Silva
Date: Wed May 10 2017 - 11:57:32 EST



Hello everybody,

While looking into Coverity ID 1350941 I ran into the following piece of code at drivers/net/ethernet/mellanox/mlxsw/spectrum_switchdev.c:1483:

1483static void mlxsw_sp_fdb_notify_mac_process(struct mlxsw_sp *mlxsw_sp,
1484 char *sfn_pl, int rec_index,
1485 bool adding)
1486{
1487 struct mlxsw_sp_port *mlxsw_sp_port;
1488 char mac[ETH_ALEN];
1489 u8 local_port;
1490 u16 vid, fid;
1491 bool do_notification = true;
1492 int err;
1493
1494 mlxsw_reg_sfn_mac_unpack(sfn_pl, rec_index, mac, &fid, &local_port);
1495 mlxsw_sp_port = mlxsw_sp->ports[local_port];
1496 if (!mlxsw_sp_port) {
1497 dev_err_ratelimited(mlxsw_sp->bus_info->dev, "Incorrect local port in FDB notification\n");
1498 goto just_remove;
1499 }
1500
1501 if (mlxsw_sp_fid_is_vfid(fid)) {
1502 struct mlxsw_sp_port *mlxsw_sp_vport;
1503
1504 mlxsw_sp_vport = mlxsw_sp_port_vport_find_by_fid(mlxsw_sp_port,
1505 fid);
1506 if (!mlxsw_sp_vport) {
1507 netdev_err(mlxsw_sp_port->dev, "Failed to find a matching vPort following FDB notification\n");
1508 goto just_remove;
1509 }
1510 vid = 0;
1511 /* Override the physical port with the vPort. */
1512 mlxsw_sp_port = mlxsw_sp_vport;
1513 } else {
1514 vid = fid;
1515 }
1516
1517do_fdb_op:
1518 err = mlxsw_sp_port_fdb_uc_op(mlxsw_sp, local_port, mac, fid,
1519 adding, true);
1520 if (err) {
1521 if (net_ratelimit())
1522 netdev_err(mlxsw_sp_port->dev, "Failed to set FDB entry\n");
1523 return;
1524 }
1525
1526 if (!do_notification)
1527 return;
1528 mlxsw_sp_fdb_call_notifiers(mlxsw_sp_port->learning_sync,
1529 adding, mac, vid, mlxsw_sp_port->dev);
1530 return;
1531
1532just_remove:
1533 adding = false;
1534 do_notification = false;
1535 goto do_fdb_op;
1536}


The issue here is that line 1496 implies that mlxsw_sp_port might be NULL. If this is the case, the execution path jumps to line 1532 and then to line 1517. All this could end up dereferencing a NULL pointer at line 1522.

Is there any chance for mlxsw_sp_port to be NULL at line 1496 and, at the same time, a NULL pointer dereference occurs at line 1522?

I'm trying to figure out if this is a false positive or something that actually needs to be fixed.

I'd really appreciate any comment on this.
Thank you!
--
Gustavo A. R. Silva