From: Elazar Leibovich <elazar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit cbe08bcbbe787315c425dde284dcb715cfbf3f39 upstream. When reading only part of the id file, the ppos isn't tracked correctly. This is taken care by simple_read_from_buffer. Reading a single byte, and then the next byte would result EOF. While this seems like not a big deal, this breaks abstractions that reads information from files unbuffered. See for example https://github.com/golang/go/issues/29399 This code was mentioned as problematic in commit cd458ba9d5a5 ("tracing: Do not (ab)use trace_seq in event_id_read()") An example C code that show this bug is: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdint.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <unistd.h> int main(int argc, char **argv) { if (argc < 2) return 1; int fd = open(argv[1], O_RDONLY); char c; read(fd, &c, 1); printf("First %c\n", c); read(fd, &c, 1); printf("Second %c\n", c); } Then run with, e.g. sudo ./a.out /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/events/tcp/tcp_set_state/id You'll notice you're getting the first character twice, instead of the first two characters in the id file. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181231115837.4932-1-elazar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Orit Wasserman <orit.was@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fixes: 23725aeeab10b ("ftrace: provide an id file for each event") Signed-off-by: Elazar Leibovich <elazar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/trace/trace_events.c | 3 --- 1 file changed, 3 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/trace/trace_events.c +++ b/kernel/trace/trace_events.c @@ -1310,9 +1310,6 @@ event_id_read(struct file *filp, char __ char buf[32]; int len; - if (*ppos) - return 0; - if (unlikely(!id)) return -ENODEV;