Re: [PATCH 01/14] fuzz/x86_emulate: Remove redundant AFL hook

[George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>]

On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 6:37 PM, Andrew Cooper
<andrew.cooper3@citrix.com> wrote:
> On 25/08/17 17:43, George Dunlap wrote:
>> You don't need __AFL_INIT if you have __AFL_LOOP.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@citrix.com>
>
> Really?  Is that covered in any documentation?
>
> I got the contrary impression from whichever version of AFL I was using
> when I put this in, and a quick look over the afl-fuzz source doesn't
> appear to equate them in any way.

Trying to answer the feof() question, I dug into llvm mode a bit more.
They are independent features but they can be used together: that is,
if you compile with afl-clang-fast, you always get a forkserver.  If
you specify the location with __AFL_INIT, that's where the forkserver
get started; otherwise, it's somewhere before main() is called.

When __AFL_LOOP(N) is present, it will execute the loop N times before
calling exit(); at which point, the forkserver will fork another
instance (either before main(), or at __AFL_INIT).

So you don't *need* __AFL_INIT; and the amount of time it will save
isn't much (the initialization every 1000 iterations), but I suppose
we might as well keep it.

 -George

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel