Re: [PATCH v2 2/4] fsck: do not die when not enough memory to examine a pack entry

2 messages, 2 authors, 2016-06-15 · open the first message on its own page

Re: [PATCH v2 2/4] fsck: do not die when not enough memory to examine a pack entry

From: Junio C Hamano <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 23:01:45

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  [off-list ref] writes:
fsck is a tool that error() is more preferred than die(), but many
"more preferred" without justifying why it is "more preferred" is
not quite a justification, is it?  Also, an object failing to load
in-core is not a missing object, so if your aim is to let "fsck"
diagnose a too-large-to-load object as missing and let it continue,
I do not know if it is "more preferred" in the first place.  Adding
a "too large--cannot check" bin of objects may be needed for it to
be useful.  Also, we might need to give at the end "oh by the way,
because we couldn't read some objects to even determine its type,
the unreachable report from this fsck run is totally useless."

The log message tries to justify that this may be a good thing for
"fsck", but the patch actually tries to change the behaviour of all
code paths that try to load an object in-core without considering
the ramifications of such a change.  I _think_ all callers should be
prepared to receive NULL when we encounter a corrupt object (and
otherwise we should fix them), but it is unclear how much audit of
the callers (if any) was done to prepare this change.

Not very excited X-<.
quoted hunk
functions embed die() inside beyond fsck's control.
unpack_compressed_entry()'s using xmallocz is such a function,
triggered from verify_packfile() -> unpack_entry(). Make it use
xmallocz_gentle() instead.

Noticed-by: Dale R. Worley [off-list ref]
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <redacted>
---
 sha1_file.c      | 4 +++-
 t/t1050-large.sh | 6 ++++++
 2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/sha1_file.c b/sha1_file.c
index 34d527f..eb69c78 100644
--- a/sha1_file.c
+++ b/sha1_file.c
@@ -1925,7 +1925,9 @@ static void *unpack_compressed_entry(struct packed_git *p,
 	git_zstream stream;
 	unsigned char *buffer, *in;
 
-	buffer = xmallocz(size);
+	buffer = xmallocz_gentle(size);
+	if (!buffer)
+		return NULL;
 	memset(&stream, 0, sizeof(stream));
 	stream.next_out = buffer;
 	stream.avail_out = size + 1;
diff --git a/t/t1050-large.sh b/t/t1050-large.sh
index aea4936..5642f84 100755
--- a/t/t1050-large.sh
+++ b/t/t1050-large.sh
@@ -163,4 +163,10 @@ test_expect_success 'zip achiving, deflate' '
 	git archive --format=zip HEAD >/dev/null
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'fsck' '
+	test_must_fail git fsck 2>err &&
+	n=$(grep "error: attempting to allocate .* over limit" err | wc -l) &&
+	test "$n" -gt 1
+'
+
 test_done

Re: [PATCH v2 2/4] fsck: do not die when not enough memory to examine a pack entry

From: Duy Nguyen <hidden>
Date: 2016-06-15 23:01:46

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 1:09 AM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:
Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  [off-list ref] writes:
quoted
fsck is a tool that error() is more preferred than die(), but many
"more preferred" without justifying why it is "more preferred" is
not quite a justification, is it?  Also, an object failing to load
in-core is not a missing object, so if your aim is to let "fsck"
diagnose a too-large-to-load object as missing and let it continue,
I do not know if it is "more preferred" in the first place.  Adding
a "too large--cannot check" bin of objects may be needed for it to
be useful.  Also, we might need to give at the end "oh by the way,
because we couldn't read some objects to even determine its type,
the unreachable report from this fsck run is totally useless."
Fair enough. I think avoiding dying in xmalloc() in this code path is
still a good thing. At least "failed to read object %s" is more
informative than simply "Out of memory". The error cascading effect in
fsck is something I think we already have. I'll try to rephrase the
commit message. But if you think this is not a good direction,
dropping it is not so bad.

I'm going to look at xmalloc() in unpack-objects. That's where we
really should not abort because of memory shortage as the user may try
to get as many objects as possible out of the pack.
The log message tries to justify that this may be a good thing for
"fsck", but the patch actually tries to change the behaviour of all
code paths that try to load an object in-core without considering
the ramifications of such a change.  I _think_ all callers should be
prepared to receive NULL when we encounter a corrupt object (and
otherwise we should fix them), but it is unclear how much audit of
the callers (if any) was done to prepare this change.
-- 
Duy
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