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Message-ID: <2c0942db0603181402o4115999jb990ac05cca7fb9e@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Mar 2006 14:02:43 -0800
From: "Ray Lee" <madrabbit@gmail.com>
Reply-To: ray-gmail@madrabbit.org
To: "Jesper Juhl" <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [patch 1/2] Validate itimer timeval from userspace
Cc: "Andrew Morton" <akpm@osdl.org>, tglx@linutronix.de,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, mingo@elte.hu, trini@kernel.crashing.org
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On 3/18/06, Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com> wrote:
> If the change only affects buggy apps (as Thomas says), then it seems
> completely obvious to me that the change should be made.

But the app isn't buggy, it's just not coded to some arbitrary spec.
Further, an arbitrary spec that *the kernel didn't implement*. The app
author could very well have been competent and tested that behavior in
a ten line program (I do that sort of code *all the time* to test
corner cases that aren't clear in man pages). Once tested, they found
out -1 is an effectively infinite timeout, went "Hey, cool, that makes
sense", and went on with their day.

You're now arguing that we should break apps -- possibly well tested
apps -- because they didn't implement a spec that the kernel itself
wasn't implementing.

That's just nuts.

> 3. Correct applications are unaffected.

You're assuming that the apps that we'd break are incorrect. That's a
big assumption. Try imagining instead that it's a well-tested app that
passed QA with flying colors on a previous version of the kernel. They
exist. Honest.

Ray
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