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Re: A patch to make it harder for drivers using devfs to crash the kerne

To: "Richard J. Broberg" <rjb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: A patch to make it harder for drivers using devfs to crash the kernel
From: Richard Gooch <rgooch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 22:40:50 -0400
Cc: devfs@xxxxxxxxxxx, ayrheads@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In-reply-to: <200107262226.f6QMQ9504925@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
References: <200107262226.f6QMQ9504925@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sender: owner-devfs@xxxxxxxxxxx
Richard J. Broberg writes:
> While developing a driver for a hot pluggable device
> we wound up crashing the kernel when registering
> as a devfs device.
> 
> A malformed driver has to try harder to crash the kernel
> when base.c has the following changes.

But still not safe. You can't register entries outside a process
context. You need to use a thread. Note that in time, the devfs core
will be stripped down and will be a simple wrapper to the VFS, which
also requires a process context. Since I know you'll never get Al Viro
to accept interrupt-context safe dentry allocation, I'd urge you to
switch to using a thread now :-)

                                Regards,

                                        Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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