Re: [PATCH] crash in 2.6.22-git2 sysctl_set_parent()

From: linas@austin.ibm.com (Linas Vepstas)
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:05:15 -0500

This is a patch (& bug report) for a crash in sysctl_set_parent() 
in 2.6.22-git2. 

Problem: 2.6.22-git2 crashes with a stack trace 
[c000000001d0fb00] c000000000067b4c .sysctl_set_parent+0x48/0x7c
[c000000001d0fb90] c000000000069b40 .register_sysctl_table+0x7c/0xf4
[c000000001d0fc30] c00000000065e710 .devinet_init+0x88/0xb0
[c000000001d0fcc0] c00000000065db74 .ip_rt_init+0x17c/0x32c
[c000000001d0fd70] c00000000065deec .ip_init+0x10/0x34
[c000000001d0fdf0] c00000000065e898 .inet_init+0x160/0x3dc
[c000000001d0fea0] c000000000630bc4 .kernel_init+0x204/0x3c8

A bit of poking around makes it clear what the problem is:
In sysctl_set_parent(), the for loop 

   for (; table->ctl_name || table->procname; table++) {

walks off the end of the table, and into garbage.  Basically,
this for-loop iterator expects all table arrays to be 
"null terminated".  However, net/ipv4/devinet.c statically 
declares an array that is not null-terminated.  The patch 
below fixes that; it works for me.  Its somewhat conservative;
if one wishes to assume that the compiler will always zero out
the empty parts of the structure, then this pach can be shrunk 
to one line: +	ctl_table		devinet_root_dir[3];

Signed-off-by: Linas Vepstas <redacted>

Thanks for tracking this down, I'll apply your patch.