Re: [PATCH] mtdchar: prevent unbounded allocation in MEMWRITE ioctl

["Michał Kępień" <kernel@kempniu.pl>]

Hi Miquèl,

> >  5. The above causes the driver to receive 2048 bytes of data for a page
> >     write in raw mode, which results in an error that propagates all the
> >     way up to mtdchar_write_ioctl().
> 
> This is definitely far from an expected behavior. Writing a page
> without OOB is completely fine.

Could it be a nandsim quirk?  Sorry, I do not feel qualified enough to
comment on this.  I prepared a code flow analysis below, though.

> > The nandsim driver returns the same error if you pass the following
> > request to the MEMWRITE ioctl:
> > 
> >     struct mtd_write_req req = {
> >         .start = 2048,
> >         .len = 2048,
> >         .ooblen = 0,
> >         .usr_data = 0x10000000,
> >         .usr_oob = NULL,
> >         .mode = MTD_OPS_RAW,
> >     };
> > 
> > so it is not the driver that is broken or insane, it is the splitting
> > process that may cause the MEMWRITE ioctl to return different error
> > codes than before.
> > 
> > I played with the code a bit more and I found a fix which addresses this
> > issue without breaking other scenarios: setting oobbuf to the same
> > pointer for every loop iteration (if ooblen is 0, no OOB data will be
> > written anyway).
> 
> You mean that
> 	{ .user_oob = NULL, .ooblen = 0 }
> fails, while
> 	{ .user_oob = random, .ooblen = 0 }
> works? This seems a little bit fragile.

That is indeed the behavior I am observing with nandsim, even on a
kernel which does not include my patch.

> Could you tell us the origin of the error? Because in
> nand_do_write_ops() if ops->oobbuf is populated then oob_required is
> set to true no matter the value set in ooblen.

Correct - and that is what causes the behavior described above (and why
the tweak I came up with works around the problem).

nand_do_write_ops() calls nand_write_page() with 'oob_required' passed
as the fifth parameter.  In raw mode, nand_write_page() calls
nand_write_page_raw().  Here is what happens there:

 1. nand_prog_page_begin_op() sets up a page programming operation by
    sending a few commands to the chip.  See nand_exec_prog_page_op()
    for details.  Note that since the 'prog' parameter is set to false,
    the last two instructions from the 'instrs' array are not run yet.

 2. 'oob_required' is checked.  If it is set to 1, OOB data is sent to
    the chip; otherwise, it is not sent.

 3. nand_prog_page_end_op() is called to finish the programming
    operation.

At that point, the ACTION_PRGPAGE switch case in ns_do_state_action()
(in drivers/mtd/nand/raw/nandsim.c) checks whether the number of bytes
it received so far for this operation (ns->regs.count, updated by
ns_nand_write_buf() as data is pushed to the chip) equals the number of
bytes in a full page with OOB data (num).  If not, an error is returned,
which results in the NAND_STATUS_FAIL flag being set in the status byte,
triggering an -EIO.

This does not happen for any other MTD operation mode because the chip
callbacks that nand_write_page() invokes in those other modes cause OOB
data to be sent to the chip.

> Plus, the code in mtdchar is clear: .oobbuf is set to NULL if there are
> no OOBs provided by the user so I believe this is a situation that
> should already work. 

Correct, though current mtdchar_write_ioctl() code only looks at the
value of the 'usr_oob' field in the struct mtd_write_req passed to it,
so even if you pass { .usr_oob = <something non-NULL>, .ooblen = 0 }, it
will still set ops.oobbuf to the pointer returned by memdup_user().

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Kępień

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