On Wed, 2012-01-11 at 14:12 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote: > There's nothing particularly special about memdup_user(): there are > many ways in which userspace can trigger GFP_KERNEL allocations. > > The problem here (one which your patch carefully covers up) is that > ecryptfs_miscdev_write() is passing an unchecked userspace-provided > `count' direct into kmalloc(). This is a bit problematic for other > reasons: it gives userspace a way to trigger heavy reclaim activity and > perhaps even to trigger the oom-killer. > > A better fix here would be to validate the incoming arg before using > it. Preferably by running ecryptfs_parse_packet_length() before taking > a copy of the data. That would require adding a small copy_from_user() > to peek at the message header. Let's split it to two parts: the specific ecryptfs issue I've given as an example here, and a general view about memdup_user(). I fully agree that in the case of ecryptfs there's a missing validity check, and just calling memdup_user() with whatever the user has passed to it is wrong and dangerous. This should be fixed in the ecryptfs code and I'll send a patch to do that. The other part, is memdup_user() itself. Kernel warnings are usually reserved (AFAIK) to cases where it would be difficult to notify the user since it happens in a flow which the user isn't directly responsible for. memdup_user() is always located in path which the user has triggered, and is usually almost the first thing we try doing in response to the trigger. In those code flows it doesn't make sense to print a kernel warnings and taint the kernel, instead we can simply notify the user about that error and let him deal with it any way he wants. There are more reasons kalloc() can show warnings besides just trying to allocate too much, and theres no reason to dump kernel warnings when it's easier to notify the user. -- Sasha. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Fight unfair telecom internet charges in Canada: sign http://stopthemeter.ca/ Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>