Buggy drivers/modules needed

Buggy drivers/modules needed

[Michael Swift]

I'm working on a Linux patch to prevent buggy modules/drivers from causing the kernel to crash. Instead, the kernel detects a crash in the driver, and transparently restarts the module. Currently this patch supports network interface card drivers, sound drivers, and file systems.

I've tested the patch by generating artifical bugs in drivers, but I want to see how well it works on real bugs.

What I would like is either:

a) sound card, network interface, or file system code with bugs that cause an oops. In particular, a pointer to what piece of code causes the oops would be helpful.

b) fragments of code from any kernel module that has caused an oops. I can splice this code into existing modules to see if it can be successfully isolated.

Thanks in advance

- Mike Swift

Re: Buggy drivers/modules needed

[Greg KH]

On Mon, May 05, 2003 at 08:36:32PM -0700, Michael Swift wrote:
> 
> What I would like is either:
> 
> a) sound card, network interface, or file system code with bugs that
> cause an oops. In particular, a pointer to what piece of code causes
> the oops would be helpful.

rmmod a usb host controller driver in the 2.5.69 kernel tree.  That will
cause major problems that would be nice to see if you can recover from :)

Good luck,

greg k-h

Re: Buggy drivers/modules needed

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

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On Mon, 05 May 2003 20:36:32 PDT, Michael Swift <mikesw@cs.washington.edu>  said:

> I'm working on a Linux patch to prevent buggy modules/drivers from causing
> the kernel to crash. Instead, the kernel detects a crash in the driver, and
> trans parently restarts the module. Currently this patch supports network
> interface card drivers, sound drivers, and file systems.

What are you planning to do about protecting a buggy module/driver from causing
a crash by stomping on somebody *elses* memory and corrupting some unrelated
data structure?

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RE: Buggy drivers/modules needed

[Michael Swift]

I run drivers with a separate kernel page table, that write-protects
memory not in use by the driver. In addition, I verify that parameters
passed from a driver to the kernel are valid, so the kernel doesn't die
while dereferencing a pointer.

- Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu [mailto:Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu] 
Sent: Monday, May 05, 2003 9:08 PM
To: Michael Swift
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Buggy drivers/modules needed 


On Mon, 05 May 2003 20:36:32 PDT, Michael Swift
<mikesw@cs.washington.edu>  said:

> I'm working on a Linux patch to prevent buggy modules/drivers from 
> causing the kernel to crash. Instead, the kernel detects a crash in 
> the driver, and trans parently restarts the module. Currently this 
> patch supports network interface card drivers, sound drivers, and file

> systems.

What are you planning to do about protecting a buggy module/driver from
causing a crash by stomping on somebody *elses* memory and corrupting
some unrelated data structure?