[PATCH v2] execve.2: execve also returns E2BIG if a string is too long

From: Rik van Riel
Date: Wed Oct 11 2023 - 10:11:58 EST


The execve syscall returns -E2BIG in 3 cases:
- The total length of the command line arguments and environment is too large.
- An argument or environment string is longer than MAX_ARG_STRLEN.
- The full path to the executable exceeds MAX_ARG_STRLEN.

Spell out all 3 cases in the -E2BIG section.

Discovered by moving a too large commandline parameter to an environment
variable, and finding that things still did not work. Examined the code
in fs/exec.c to get the details.

Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel <riel@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Suggested-by: Matthew House <mattlloydhouse@xxxxxxxxx>
---
man2/execve.2 | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/man2/execve.2 b/man2/execve.2
index 0d9582492ad1..85c6ec15df3c 100644
--- a/man2/execve.2
+++ b/man2/execve.2
@@ -449,7 +449,8 @@ The total number of bytes in the environment
.RI ( envp )
and argument list
.RI ( argv )
-is too large.
+is too large, an argument or environment string is too long, or
+the full path name to the executable is too long.
.TP
.B EACCES
Search permission is denied on a component of the path prefix of
--
2.41.0