Re: [PATCH 01/10] tracing/filters: Fix MATCH_END_ONLY regex matching for fixed-size strings

From: Steven Rostedt

Date: Mon Oct 26 2026 - 10:01:36 EST


On Sun, 25 Oct 2026 01:25:33 +0900
"Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> regex_match_end() calculated string length as "len - 1", assuming @len is
> the string length including trailing '\0'. However, for fixed-size string
> fields, filter_pred_string() passes field->size as @len, and for "comm",
> filter_pred_comm() passes TASK_COMM_LEN as @len.
>
> Because @len in these cases represents the buffer capacity rather than the
> actual length of the string, regex_match_end() tests against the tail of
> the buffer (typically trailing '\0' padding) rather than the end of the
> string. Furthermore, if @len is 0 (denoting a dynamic string ending with
> '\0'), "len - 1" underflows to -1 and never matches.
>
> Compute the actual string length using strnlen(str, len) when @len is
> non-zero, and strlen(str) when @len is zero.
>
> Fixes: a3291c14ecf0 ("tracing/filters: Fix MATCH_END_ONLY filter matching")
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) <mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c | 6 +++---
> 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c b/kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c
> index 5e74d2dae40a..18ce3ec00d34 100644
> --- a/kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c
> +++ b/kernel/trace/trace_events_filter.c
> @@ -1075,10 +1075,10 @@ static int regex_match_middle(char *str, struct regex *r, int len)
>
> static int regex_match_end(char *str, struct regex *r, int len)
> {
> - int strlen = len - 1;
> + int slen = len ? strnlen(str, len) : strlen(str);
>
> - if (strlen >= r->len &&
> - memcmp(str + strlen - r->len, r->pattern, r->len) == 0)
> + if (slen >= r->len &&
> + memcmp(str + slen - r->len, r->pattern, r->len) == 0)
> return 1;

This slows down the code as it adds more strlen() calculations (it could
have already been done.

Let's fix the callers instead and have them pass in the real length.

-- Steve


> return 0;
> }