On Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:24:08 +0200 Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat 22-09-18 22:53:32, zhe.he@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > From: He Zhe <zhe.he@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > > debug_guardpage_minorder_setup and cmdline_parse_kernelcore do not check > > input argument before using it. The argument would be a NULL pointer if > > "debug_guardpage_minorder" or "kernelcore", without its value, is set in > > command line and thus causes the following panic. > > > > PANIC: early exception 0xe3 IP 10:ffffffffa08146f1 error 0 cr2 0x0 > > [ 0.000000] CPU: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 4.19.0-rc4-yocto-standard+ #11 > > [ 0.000000] RIP: 0010:parse_option_str+0x11/0x90 > > ... > > [ 0.000000] Call Trace: > > [ 0.000000] cmdline_parse_kernelcore+0x19/0x41 > > [ 0.000000] do_early_param+0x57/0x8e > > [ 0.000000] parse_args+0x208/0x320 > > [ 0.000000] ? rdinit_setup+0x30/0x30 > > [ 0.000000] parse_early_options+0x29/0x2d > > [ 0.000000] ? rdinit_setup+0x30/0x30 > > [ 0.000000] parse_early_param+0x36/0x4d > > [ 0.000000] setup_arch+0x336/0x99e > > [ 0.000000] start_kernel+0x6f/0x4ee > > [ 0.000000] x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x26 > > [ 0.000000] x86_64_start_kernel+0x6f/0x72 > > [ 0.000000] secondary_startup_64+0xa4/0xb0 > > > > This patch adds a check to prevent the panic > > Is this something we deeply care about? The kernel command line > interface is to be used by admins who know what they are doing. Using > random or wrong values for these parameters can have detrimental effects > on the system. This particular case would blow up early, good. At least > it is visible immediately. This and many other parameters could have a > seemingly valid input (e.g. not a missing value) and subtle runtime > effect. You won't blow up immediately but the system is hardly usable > and the early checking cannot possible catch all those cases. Take a > mem=$N copied from one machine to another with a different memory > layout. While 2G can be perfectly fine on one a different machine might > result on a completely unusable system because the available RAM is > place higher. > > So I am really wondering. Do we really want a lot of code to catch > kernel command line incorrect inputs? Does it really lead to better > quality overall? IMHO, we do have a proper documentation and we should > trust those starting the kernel. No, it's not very important. It might help some people understand why their kernel went splat in rare circumstances. And it's __init code so the runtime impact is nil. It bothers me that there are many other kernel parameters which have the same undesirable behaviour. I'd much prefer a general fixup which gave all of them this treatment, but it's unclear how to do this.
