On Thu, 30 Aug 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:

On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 07:41:31 -0700 (PDT) bugme-daemon@bugzilla.kernel.org wrote:

quoted

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8961

This looks serious.

quoted

           Summary: BUG triggered by oidentd in netlink code

Aug 29 23:28:44 bowl kernel: [349587.500440] BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL
pointer dereference<1>BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
virtual address 00000054
Aug 29 23:28:44 bowl kernel: [349587.500454]  printing eip:
Aug 29 23:28:45 bowl kernel: [349587.500457] c03318ae
Aug 29 23:28:45 bowl kernel: [349587.500459] *pde = 00000000
Aug 29 23:28:45 bowl kernel: [349587.500464] Oops: 0000 [#1]
Aug 29 23:28:45 bowl kernel: [349587.500466] PREEMPT SMP
Aug 29 23:28:46 bowl kernel: [349587.500474] Modules linked in: w83627hf
hwmon_vid i2c_isa
Aug 29 23:28:46 bowl kernel: [349587.500483] CPU:    0
Aug 29 23:28:47 bowl kernel: [349587.500485] EIP:    0060:[<c03318ae>]    Not
tainted VLI
Aug 29 23:28:47 bowl kernel: [349587.500487] EFLAGS: 00010246   (2.6.22.3 #1)
Aug 29 23:28:47 bowl kernel: [349587.500499] EIP is at netlink_rcv_skb+0xa/0x7e
Aug 29 23:28:48 bowl kernel: [349587.500506] eax: 00000000   ebx: 00000000

Seems to be a bug introduced by the netlink_run_queue conversion,
since there is no locking and netlink_run_queue doesn't check
for NULL results from skb_dequeue, it might pass NULL to
netlink_rcv_skb, which crashes.

Does this patch help?