Re: + libfs-fix-error-format-in-simple_attr_write.patch added to mm-nonmm-unstable branch

From: Farber, Eliav
Date: Fri Sep 16 2022 - 07:20:10 EST


On 9/16/2022 9:11 AM, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 02:34:25PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
libfs-fix-error-format-in-simple_attr_write.patch

From: Eliav Farber <farbere@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: libfs: fix error format in simple_attr_write()
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 2022 09:15:44 +0000

In commit 488dac0c9237 ("libfs: fix error cast of negative value in
simple_attr_write()"), simple_attr_write() was changed to use kstrtoull()
instead of simple_strtoll() to convert a string got from a user.  A user
trying to set a negative value will get an error.

This is wrong since it breaks all the places that use
DEFINE_DEBUGFS_ATTRIBUTE() with format of a signed integer.

For the record there are 43 current users of signed integer which are
likely to be effected by this:

$ git grep -n -A1 -w DEFINE_DEBUGFS_ATTRIBUTE | grep ');' |
sed 's,.*\(".*%.*"\).*,\1,' | sort | uniq -c
  1 "%08llx\n"
  5 "0x%016llx\n"
  5 "0x%02llx\n"
  5 "0x%04llx\n"
 13 "0x%08llx\n"
  1 "0x%4.4llx\n"
  3 "0x%.4llx\n"
  4 "0x%llx\n"
  1 "%1lld\n"
 40 "%lld\n"
  2 "%lli\n"
129 "%llu\n"
  1 "%#llx\n"
  2 "%llx\n"

u64 is not an issue for negative numbers.
The %lld and %llu in any case are for 64-bit value, representing it as
unsigned simplifies the generic code, but it doesn't mean we can't keep
their signed value if we know that.

This change uses sscanf() to fix the problem since it does the conversion
based on the supplied format string.

--- a/fs/libfs.c~libfs-fix-error-format-in-simple_attr_write
+++ a/fs/libfs.c
@@ -1017,9 +1017,12 @@ ssize_t simple_attr_write(struct file *f
              goto out;

      attr->set_buf[size] = '\0';
-     ret = kstrtoull(attr->set_buf, 0, &val);
-     if (ret)
+     ret = sscanf(attr->set_buf, attr->fmt, &val);
+     if (ret != 1) {
+             ret = -EINVAL;
              goto out;
+     }
+
      ret = attr->set(attr->data, val);
      if (ret == 0)
              ret = len; /* on success, claim we got the whole input */

No scanf please. Just revert original patch if something broke.

scanf may be tolerable if it is just one format conversion but it is
disaster as an interface.


If I revert original patch I get this checkpatch warning:
"WARNING: simple_strtoll is obsolete, use kstrtoll instead".

Should I still revert the original patch as is, or send a new patch that
fixes the issue by using kstrtoll()?

--
Thanks, Eliav