Re: Error returns nothandled correctly by sysfs.c:subsys_attr_store()

From: Andrew Patterson
Date: Thu Jan 03 2008 - 19:27:18 EST



On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 09:07 +0900, Tejun Heo wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Andrew Patterson wrote:
> > It looks like this is a shell issue. After looking through the sysfs
> > code, I realized that this problem seems to be driven from user-land.
> > So I performed some experiments:
> >
> > 1. Wrote a simple program that just used write(2) to write to the
> > sysfs entry. This works fine.
> > 2. Used /bin/echo instead of the built-in echo command. This too
> > works fine.
> > 3. Tried several shells. Zsh and Bash both fail. Csh works fine.
> >
> > I then ran strace on the following shell-script:
> >
> > #!/bin/bash
> >
> > echo x > allow_restart
> > echo y > allow_restart
> > echo z > allow_restart
> >
> > and got:
> >
> > # strace -e trace=write ~/tmp/tester.sh
> > write(1, "x\n", 2) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(1, "x\n", 2) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(2, "/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line"..., 72/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line 4: echo: write error: Invalid argument
> > ) = 72
> > write(1, "x\ny\n", 4) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(1, "x\ny\n", 4) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(2, "/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line"..., 72/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line 5: echo: write error: Invalid argument
> > ) = 72
> > write(1, "x\ny\nz\n", 6) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(1, "x\ny\nz\n", 6) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
> > write(2, "/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line"..., 72/home/andrew/tmp/tester.sh: line 6: echo: write error: Invalid argument
> > ) = 72
> > write(1, "x\ny\nz\n", 6x
> > y
> > z
> > ) = 6
> > Process 3800 detached
>
> Eeeeeeeekkkk.... That's scary. Which distro are you using and what does
> 'bash --version' say?

IA64 Debian lenny.

# bash --version
GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (ia64-unknown-linux-gnu)

# zsh --version
zsh 4.3.4 (ia64-unknown-linux-gnu)

# csh --version
tcsh 6.14.00 (Astron) 2005-03-25 (ia64-unknown-linux) options
wide,nls,dl,al,kan,rh,nd,color,filec

I suppose I should try this an ia32 box again, and perhaps with some
other distros. I am not sure what the kernel can do about this, but it
might be nice to report it to the shell maintainers.

--
Andrew Patterson
Hewlett-Packard Company

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