Re: [syzbot] [hfs?] WARNING in hfs_write_inode

From: Michael Schmitz
Date: Thu Jul 20 2023 - 21:25:48 EST


Hi Matthew,

Am 21.07.2023 um 13:11 schrieb Matthew Wilcox:
You've misunderstood. Google have decided to subject the entire kernel
(including obsolete unmaintained filesystems) to stress tests that it's
never had before. IOW these bugs have been there since the code was
merged. There's nothing to back out. There's no API change to blame.
It's always been buggy and it's never mattered before.

It wouldn't be so bad if Google had also decided to fund people to fix
those bugs, but no, they've decided to dump them on public mailing lists
and berate developers into fixing them.

Dumping these reports on public mailing lists may still be OK (leaving aside that this invites writing code to exploit these bugs). Asking nicely for a fix, too.

'Berating developers' clearly oversteps the mark.

Maybe Google need to train their AI (that they're evidently training on kernel source, so ought to be grateful for such a nice training set) with a view to manners? We'd sure hate Google's input to go ignored for lack of civility?

(We could always reassign bugs of this sort against e.g. HFS to distrubtions, of course. They might have the resources to do something about it. Doesn't Google distribute Linux in some form or other? Is Android or ChromeOS susceptible to this issue? Time to find out ...)

Be that as it may - removing code that still has use, just to appease pushy Google staff (or AI) is just plain wrong IMO.

Cheers,

Michael