Re: [PATCH] fix use after free in netlink_kernel_create()

From: Patrick McHardy <redacted>
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 2006 20:49:06 +0200

Andrew Morton wrote:

quoted

On Sun, 13 Aug 2006 13:52:58 +0200
Patrick McHardy [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Quite a few users of netlink_kernel_create will panic when creating
the socket fails (rtnetlink for example, which is always present),
so you might as well call panic here directly.

That's a bit lame.  Panicing at do_initcalls() time is OK (something is
seriously screwed anyway) but we usually try to handle the ENOMEM nicely if
it happens at modprobe-time.

The users I looked at can't be built as modules (rtnetlink, genetlink,
audit subsystem), I'm not aware of any modules panicing on
netlink_kernel_create failure. But all of netlink, genetlink and
rtnetlink are always built-in when CONFIG_NET=y, so we might as well
panic here.

Agreed.

netlink_proto_init() is a core_initcall(), we are pretty much in
an irrecoverable bind if that thing fails, so panic() is appropriate
here.