Message-ID: <474D1BD4.2050805@suse.de>
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:42:12 +0900
From: Tejun Heo <teheo@suse.de>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20070801)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, andrew.patterson@hp.com,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Error returns not handled correctly by	sysfs.c:subsys_attr_store()
References: <1195683419.16019.225.camel@grinch> <20071126203116.0c93cdb9.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <20071127053321.GA975@kroah.com>
In-Reply-To: <20071127053321.GA975@kroah.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 2663
Lines: 66

Greg KH wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 26, 2007 at 08:31:16PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
>> On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:16:59 -0700 Andrew Patterson <andrew.patterson@hp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The buf in fs/sysfs.c:subsys_attr_store() does not seem to be updated
>>> correctly when returning a negative value (indicating that an error
>>> condition has occurred) is returned.  If a negative value is returned,
>>> the next subsequent call to subsys_attr_store will have the contents of
>>> buf appended to the previous call.
>> subsys_attr_store() gets deleted by
>> http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/gregkh/gregkh-2.6/gregkh-01-driver/kset-kill-subsys-attr.patch
>>
>> So maybe we will soon accidentally fix whatever-this-is?  Or maybe we will
>> faithfully maintain it.
> 
> Yes, subsys attributes go away, but this is showing a bug in the sysfs
> core with attributes, not in the "middle" layers of attributes.
> 
> I bounced the original bug report to Tejun, who has been changing the
> logic around this area to see if he sees anything that might be
> different now.
> 
> Tejun?

Weird, the problem is not reproducible here.

# echo a > allow_restart
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument
[  437.518024] buf_ptr = 0xffff810005e20000, buf = x
[  437.518027] , count = 2
# echo b > allow_restart
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument
[  438.972973] buf_ptr = 0xffff81001be6f000, buf = y
[  438.972976] , count = 2
# echo c > allow_restart
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument
[  440.539747] buf_ptr = 0xffff81001d4ba000, buf = z
[  440.539750] , count = 2

Which is expected.  On each open, sysfs_buffer is allocated with kzalloc
and the buffer is freed on close, so I don't see how it can happen.
Behavior for multiple write can be considered peculiar in that ppos is
essentially ignored and each write is passed just like brand new write
to ->store method but this too is the expected behavior.

# (echo a; echo b; echo c) > allow_restart
[  765.257132] buf_ptr = 0xffff81001be4f000, buf = a
[  765.257135] , count = 2
[  765.285474] buf_ptr = 0xffff81001be4f000, buf = b
[  765.285484] , count = 2
[  765.314002] buf_ptr = 0xffff81001be4f000, buf = c
[  765.314004] , count = 2
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument
-bash: echo: write error: Invalid argument

Andrew Petterson, can you please build 2.6.24-rc3 from clean source tree
and retry?

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