Stack overflow i guess while insmod - linux-kernel

I have built kernel 2.6.35 on my system with some specific requirement. I also built some app defined module with the same kernel. I booted up the built version and I find it did not work properly as there is some gui and other modules missing problem. But the system booted up and I did a insmod app.ko. I faced a crash. I found out that it is a stack problem. A caller function in the APP is passing address of two local variable. like int a, b; add (&a, &b); I checked the values of &a and &b before passing and it remained non-null but when i receive the same in the calling function, both the &a, &b are NULL or some garbage value. I increased the stack size but nothing happened. When i skipped the function call, I could see that many allocation of memory has also failed. So I think it should be memory problem. Is there anything I should be checking for gcc option to define the stack or check for stack overflow. Any hints on this could help me a lot. Thanks in advance. I just made some abstract examples since the original code section takes lot of time to explain.
main()
{
struct DMAINFO* pDmaInfo;
struct DESC* pDesc;
/* printk("The function aruguments are Desc = %p and DmaInfo %p", &pDesc, &pDmaInfo); */
Create_DMA(&pDesc, &pDmaInfo);
}
void Create_DMA(**ppDesc, **ppDmaInfor)
{
printk("The function aruguments are Desc = %p and DmaInfo %p", ppDesc, ppDmaInfo);
}
The printk statement inside create_DMA gives me NULL values, but the same print statement in the main function before the create_DMA call has some values.

pDesc and pDmaInfo is un-initialed before Create_DMA(), so it contains garbage value and causes the print statement in the main function before the create_DMA call outputs some values.
When Create_DMA() is called, Create_DMA() try to allocation memory and some other resources and put the result at pDesc and pDmaInfo. When Create_DMA() fails, the value of pDesc and pDmaInfo is undefined, depends on process of Create_DMA().
To avoid such problem, you should always init the pDesc and pDmaInfo and write the Create_DMA() carefully.
main()
{
....
struct DMAINFO* pDmaInfo = NULL;
struct DESC* pDesc = NULL;
....
}

Related

How to call a c-function that takes a c-struct that contains pointers

From a GO program on a Raspberry PI I'm trying to call a function(Matlab function converted to C function) and the input to the function is a pointer to a struct and the struct contains pointer to a double(data) and a pointer to an int(size) and two int(allocatedSize, numDimensions). I have tried several ways but nothing has worked, when I have passed the compilation it usually throws a panic: runtime error: cgo argument has Go pointer to Go pointer when I run the program.
sumArray.c
/*sumArray.C*/
/* Include files */
#include "sumArray.h"
/* Function Definitions */
double sumArray(const emxArray_real_T *A1)
{
double S1;
int vlen;
int k;
vlen = A1->size[0];
if (A1->size[0] == 0) {
S1 = 0.0;
} else {
S1 = A1->data[0];
for (k = 2; k <= vlen; k++) {
S1 += A1->data[k - 1];
}
}
return S1;
}
sumArray.h
#ifndef SUMARRAY_H
#define SUMARRAY_H
/* Include files */
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "sumArray_types.h"
/* Function Declarations */
extern double sumArray(const emxArray_real_T *A1);
#endif
sumArray_types.h
#ifndef SUMARRAY_TYPES_H
#define SUMARRAY_TYPES_H
/* Include files */
/* Type Definitions */
#ifndef struct_emxArray_real_T
#define struct_emxArray_real_T
struct emxArray_real_T
{
double *data;
int *size;
int allocatedSize;
int numDimensions;
};
#endif /*struct_emxArray_real_T*/
#ifndef typedef_emxArray_real_T
#define typedef_emxArray_real_T
typedef struct emxArray_real_T emxArray_real_T;
#endif /*typedef_emxArray_real_T*/
#endif
/* End of code generation (sumArray_types.h) */
main.go
// #cgo CFLAGS: -g -Wall
// #include <stdlib.h>
// #include "sumArray.h"
import "C"
import (
"fmt"
)
func main() {
a1 := [4]C.Double{1,1,1,1}
a2 := [1]C.int{4}
cstruct := C.emxArray_real_T{data: &a1[0], size: &a2[0]}
cstructArr := [1]C.emxArray_real_T{cstruct}
y := C.sumArray(&cstructArr[0])
fmt.Print(float64(y))
}
With this example I get panic: runtime error: cgo argument has Go pointer to Go pointer when I run the program.
I do not how to make it work or if it is possible to make it work. I hope someone can help me or give some direction on how to solve this.
Too much for a comment, so here's the answer.
First, the original text:
A direct solution is to use C.malloc(4 * C.sizeof(C.double))to allocate the array of double-s. Note that you have to make sure to call C.free() on it when done. The same applies to the second array of a single int.
Now, your comment to the Mattanis' remark, which was, reformatted a bit:
thanks for giving some pointers. I tried with
a1 := [4]C.double{1,1,1,1}
sizeA1 := C.malloc(4 * C.sizeof_double)
cstruct := C.emxArray_real_T{
data: &a1[0],
size: (*C.int)(sizeA1)
}
y := C.sumArray(cstruct)
defer C.free(sizeA1)
but it gave me the same
answer as before cgo argument
has Go pointer to Go pointer when I
tried to run the program
You still seem to miss the crucial point. When you're using cgo, there are two disjoint "memory views":
"The Go memory" is everything allocated by the Go runtime powering your running process—on behalf of that process. This memory (most of the time, barring weird tricks) is known to the GC—which is a part of the runtime.
"The C memory" is memory allocated by the C code—typically by calling the libc's malloc()/realloc().
Now imagine a not-so-far-fetched scenario:
Your program runs, the C "side" gets initialized and
spawns its own thread (or threads), and holds handles on them.
Your Go "side" already uses multiple threads to run your goroutines.
You allocate some Go memory in your Go code and pass it
to the C side.
The C side passes the address of that memory to one or more of its own threads.
Your program continues to chug away, and so do the C-side threads—in parallel with your Go code.
As a result you have a reasonably classical scenario in which you get a super-simple situation for unsynchronized parallel memory access, which is a sure recepy for disaster on today's multi-core multi-socket hardware.
Also consider that Go is considerably a more higher-level programming language than C; at the bare minimum, it has automatic garbage collection, and notice that nothing in the Go spec specifies how exactly the GC must be specified.
This means, a particular implementation of Go (including the reference one—in the future) is free to allow its GC to move arbitrary objects in the memory¹, and this means updating every pointer pointing into the memory block in its original location to point to the same place in the block's new location—after it was moved.
With these considerations in mind, the Go devs postulated that in order to keep cgo-using programs future-proof², it is forbidden to pass to C any memory blocks which contain pointers to other Go memory blocks.
It's okay to pass Go memory blocks which contain pointers to C memory, though.
Going back to the example from your second comment,
you still allocate the array of 4 doubles, a1, in the Go memory.
Then the statement cstruct := C.emxArray_real_T{...} again allocates an instance of C.emxArray_real_T in the Go memory, and so after you initialize its data field with a pointer to Go memory (&a1[0]), and then pass its address to the C side, the runtime performs its dynamic checks before actually calling into the C side and crashes your program.
¹ This is typical behaviour for the so-called "generational" garbage collectors, for one example.
² That is, you recompile your program with a future version of the Go compiler of the same "major" release, and the program continues to work, unmodified.

how to transfer string(char*) in kernel into user process using copy_to_user

I'm making code to transfer string in kernel to usermode using systemcall and copy_to_user
here is my code
kernel
#include<linux/kernel.h>
#include<linux/syscalls.h>
#include<linux/sched.h>
#include<linux/slab.h>
#include<linux/errno.h>
asmlinkage int sys_getProcTagSysCall(pid_t pid, char **tag){
printk("getProcTag system call \n\n");
struct task_struct *task= (struct task_struct*) kmalloc(sizeof(struct task_struct),GFP_KERNEL);
read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
task = find_task_by_vpid(pid);
if(task == NULL )
{
printk("corresponding pid task does not exist\n");
read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
return -EFAULT;
}
read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
printk("Corresponding pid task exist \n");
printk("tag is %s\n" , task->tag);
/*
task -> tag : string is stored in task->tag (ex : "abcde")
this part is well worked
*/
if(copy_to_user(*tag, task->tag, sizeof(char) * task->tag_length) !=0)
;
return 1;
}
and this is user
#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h>
int main()
{
char *ret=NULL;
int pid = 0;
printf("PID : ");
scanf("%4d", &pid);
if(syscall(339, pid, &ret)!=1) // syscall 339 is getProcTagSysCall
printf("pid %d does not exist\n", pid);
else
printf("Corresponding pid tag is %s \n",ret); //my output is %s = null
return 0;
}
actually i don't know about copy_to_user well. but I think copy_to_user(*tag, task->tag, sizeof(char) * task->tag_length) is operated like this code
so i use copy_to_user like above
#include<stdio.h>
int re();
void main(){
char *b = NULL;
if (re(&b))
printf("success");
printf("%s", b);
}
int re(char **str){
char *temp = "Gdg";
*str = temp;
return 1;
}
Is this a college assignment of some sort?
asmlinkage int sys_getProcTagSysCall(pid_t pid, char **tag){
What is this, Linux 2.6? What's up with ** instead of *?
printk("getProcTag system call \n\n");
Somewhat bad. All strings are supposed to be prefixed.
struct task_struct *task= (struct task_struct*) kmalloc(sizeof(struct task_struct),GFP_KERNEL);
What is going on here? Casting malloc makes no sense whatsoever, if you malloc you should have used sizeof(*task) instead, but you should not malloc in the first place. You want to find a task and in fact you just overwrite this pointer's value few lines later anyway.
read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
task = find_task_by_vpid(pid);
find_task_by_vpid requires RCU. The kernel would have told you that if you had debug enabled.
if(task == NULL )
{
printk("corresponding pid task does not exist\n");
read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
return -EFAULT;
}
read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
So... you unlock... but you did not get any kind of reference to the task.
printk("Corresponding pid task exist \n");
printk("tag is %s\n" , task->tag);
... in other words by the time you do task->tag, the task may already be gone. What requirements are there to access ->tag itself?
if(copy_to_user(*tag, task->tag, sizeof(char) * task->tag_length) !=0)
;
What's up with this? sizeof(char) is guaranteed to be 1.
I'm really confused by this entire business.
When you have a syscall which copies data to userspace where amount of data is not known prior to the call, teh syscall accepts both buffer AND its size. Then you can return appropriate error if the thingy you are trying to copy would not fit.
However, having a syscall in the first place looks incorrect. In linux per-task data is exposed to userspace in /proc/pid/. Figuring out how to add a file to proc is easy and left as an exercise for the reader.
It's quite obvious from the way you fixed it. copy_to_user() will only copy data between two memory regions - one accessible only to kernel and the other accessible also to user. It will not, however, handle any memory allocation. Userspace buffer has to be already allocated and you should pass address of this buffer to the kernel.
One more thing you can change is to change your syscall to use normal pointer to char instead of pointer to pointer which is useless.
Also note that you are leaking memory in your kernel code. You allocate memory for task_struct using kmalloc and then you override the only pointer you have to this memory when calling find_task_by_vpid() and this memory is never freed. find_task_by_vpid() will return a pointer to a task_struct which already exists in memory so there is no need to allocate any buffer for this.
i solved my problem by making malloc in user
I changed
char *b = NULL;
to
char *b = (char*)malloc(sizeof(char) * 100)
I don't know why this work properly. but as i guess copy_to_user get count of bytes as third argument so I should malloc before assigning a value
I don't know. anyone who knows why adding malloc is work properly tell me

Invalid free Valgrind

for some reason calling my function 'delAll' more than once will cause a invalid free error from Valgrind. I don't understand why if I call this function the second time would cause the program to go into the while loop again even though it just "delAll" of the node
//p is a linked list with call
struct node{
char *str, int data, struct node *next;
}
//here's the function I am having trouble with:
void delAll()
{
struct node *temp,*temp2;
temp=p;
while(temp!=NULL)
{
temp2=temp;
temp= temp->next;
free(temp2->str);
free(temp2);
}
}
p is the pointer to your list, and right now it will still after the delAll call point to the (free'd) start of the list. I'd just do;
p=NULL;
...right after your while loop to set p to null (ie have the list properly cleared). That will prevent your delAll from trying to free all elements again.
Of course that would depend on p not just being a temporary variable, I'm assuming it's the real "start of the list" pointer.

malloc - C program - allocates value 0 to integer in gcc

I have a linked list structure like this
typedef struct list_node {
int data;
struct list_node *next;
}l_node;
void print_list(l_node *head) {
l_node *cur_node = head;
while(cur_node!=NULL) {
printf("%d\t", cur_node->data);
cur_node = cur_node->next;
}
}
void main() {
printf("List");
l_node *new_node = (l_node*)malloc(sizeof(l_node));
print_list(new_node);
}
When I compile gcc linkedlist.c and do ./a.out
I get output
List
0
But when I tried it in VC++, I got error (since I am trying to access invalid memory location in cur_node->next).
So, does malloc of gcc allocate 0 value by default to the integer variable inside the structure? Why I didn't get the same error while doing the same print_list in gcc?
The contents of the memory returned by malloc are not initialized. You cannot read from that memory before you initialize it (by writing to it at least once).
gcc may be "helpfully" zero-initializing the memory, but that behavior isn't required. The Visual C++ C Runtime (CRT) will give you uninitialized memory in a release build (for maximum performance) and memory initialized with the special fill byte 0xcd in a debug build (to help you find where you may be using uninitialized memory).
So, basically, you need to initialize the memory before you use it. If you want the runtime to zero-initialize the heap block before it gives it to you, you may use calloc.
you need to assign new_node->next = NULL because you check if the current node is NULL or not, and malloc does not initialize the allocated space with any value, so there is no gurantee that the value would be initialized. To be safe you need to assign NULL manually to the tail of the linked list, or an invalid pointer.

What useful things can I do with Visual C++ Debug CRT allocation hooks except finding reproduceable memory leaks?

Visual C++ debug runtime library features so-called allocation hooks. Works this way: you define a callback and call _CrtSetAllocHook() to set that callback. Now every time a memory allocation/deallocation/reallocation is done CRT calls that callback and passes a handful of parameters.
I successfully used an allocation hook to find a reproduceable memory leak - basically CRT reported that there was an unfreed block with allocation number N (N was the same on every program run) at program termination and so I wrote the following in my hook:
int MyAllocHook( int allocType, void* userData, size_t size, int blockType,
long requestNumber, const unsigned char* filename, int lineNumber)
{
if( requestNumber == TheNumberReported ) {
Sleep( 0 );// a line to put breakpoint on
}
return TRUE;
}
since the leak was reported with the very same allocation number every time I could just put a breakpoint inside the if-statement and wait until it was hit and then inspect the call stack.
What other useful things can I do using allocation hooks?
You could also use it to find unreproducible memory leaks:
Make a data structure where you map the allocated pointer to additional information
In the allocation hook you could query the current call stack (StackWalk function) and store the call stack in the data structure
In the de-allocation hook, remove the call stack information for that allocation
At the end of your application, loop over the data structure and report all call stacks. These are the places where memory was allocated but not freed.
The value "requestNumber" is not passed on to the function when deallocating (MS VS 2008). Without this number you cannot keep track of your allocation. However, you can peek into the heap header and extract that value from there:
Note: This is compiler dependent and may change without notice/ warning by the compiler.
// This struct is a copy of the heap header used by MS VS 2008.
// This information is prepending each allocated memory object in debug mode.
struct MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader {
MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader * _next;
MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader * _prev;
char * _szFilename;
int _nLine;
int _nDataSize;
int _nBlockUse;
long _lRequest;
char _gap[4];
};
int MyAllocHook(..) { // same as in question
if(nAllocType == _HOOK_FREE) {
// requestNumber isn't passed on to the Hook on free.
// However in the heap header this value is stored.
size_t headerSize = sizeof(MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader);
MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader* pHead;
size_t ptr = (size_t) pvData - headerSize;
pHead = (MsVS_CrtMemBlockHeader*) (ptr);
long requestNumber = pHead->_lRequest;
// Do what you like to keep track of this allocation.
}
}
You could keep record of every allocation request then remove it once the deallocation is invoked, for instance: This could help you tracking memory leak problems that are way much worse than this to track down.
Just the first idea that comes to my mind...

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