Re: [PATCH] Set bounds on what /proc/self/make-it-fail accepts.

From: Dave Jones
Date: Wed Feb 19 2014 - 17:31:55 EST


On Wed, Feb 19, 2014 at 02:00:21PM -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:

> > I toyed with the idea of changing task_struct.make_it_fail to unsigned too,
> > but only realized I missed that after I'd sent out the diff.
>
> If we're touching the task_struct we could make it a bool.
>
> Or just a single bit(field). task_struct already has a bunch of
> bitfields in it (strangely, they aren't contiguous).

afaics, asides from brk_randomized, they're contiguous, and gcc dtrt..

unsigned int in_execve:1; /* 768:31 4 */
unsigned int in_iowait:1; /* 768:30 4 */
unsigned int no_new_privs:1; /* 768:29 4 */
unsigned int sched_reset_on_fork:1; /* 768:28 4 */
unsigned int sched_contributes_to_load:1; /* 768:27 4 */

So we could move the COMPAT_BRK ifdef and save 4 bytes for all the people still using libc5.
(Or those who are for some reason averse to heap randomization).

It's not really worth doing unless you're moving a bunch of other stuff around
in task_struct though, because as it is now, that struct has a bunch of alignment padding
& holes, so you're not going to save anything.

The other tricky part with reorganizing that struct is that so much of it is configurable.

Dave

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