[PATCH] char: misc: register chrdev region with all possible minors

From: Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo
Date: Mon Mar 17 2025 - 10:01:16 EST


register_chrdev will only register the first 256 minors of a major chrdev.
That means that dynamically allocated misc devices with minor above 255
will fail to open with -ENXIO.

This was found by kernel test robot when testing a different change that
makes all dynamically allocated minors be above 255. This has, however,
been separately tested by creating 256 serio_raw devices with the help of
userio driver.

Ever since allowing misc devices with minors above 128, this has been
possible.

Fix it by registering all minor numbers from 0 to MINORMASK + 1 for
MISC_MAJOR.

Reported-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@xxxxxxxxx>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/oe-lkp/202503171507.6c8093d0-lkp@xxxxxxxxx
Fixes: ab760791c0cf ("char: misc: Increase the maximum number of dynamic misc devices to 1048448")
Signed-off-by: Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo <cascardo@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/char/misc.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/char/misc.c b/drivers/char/misc.c
index f7dd455dd0dd3c7c9956e772b5ab8bd83a67a4a6..dda466f9181acf76564b5e41ed6e858928e56182 100644
--- a/drivers/char/misc.c
+++ b/drivers/char/misc.c
@@ -315,7 +315,7 @@ static int __init misc_init(void)
goto fail_remove;

err = -EIO;
- if (register_chrdev(MISC_MAJOR, "misc", &misc_fops))
+ if (__register_chrdev(MISC_MAJOR, 0, MINORMASK + 1, "misc", &misc_fops))
goto fail_printk;
return 0;


---
base-commit: 2dc25093218f5d42391549de6fe45e1aa9325676
change-id: 20250317-misc-chrdev-b26b572a47fc

Best regards,
--
Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo <cascardo@xxxxxxxxxx>