Fix false old value return of sysctl
PATCH 1/1 Fix false old value return of sysctl
For current sysctl syscall, if the user wants to get the old value of a sysctl entry and set a new value for it by once sysctl syscall, the old value is always
overwriten by the new value if the sysctl entry is of string type and if the user sets its strategy tosysctl_string. This issue lies in the strategy being run
twice if the strategy is set to sysctl_string, the general
strategy sysctl_string always returns 0 if success.
Such strategy routines as sysctl_jiffies and sysctl_jiffies_ms
return 1 because they do read and write for the sysctl entry.
The strategy routine sysctl_string return 0 although it actually
read and write the sysctl entry.
According to my analysis, if a strategy routine do read and write,
it should return 1, if it just does some necessary check but not read and write, it should return 0, for example sysctl_intvec.
The following program verifies this point:
#include <linux/unistd.h>
#include <linux/types.h>
#include <linux/sysctl.h>
#include <errno.h>
_syscall1(int, _sysctl, struct __sysctl_args *, args); int sysctl(int *name, int nlen, void *oldval, size_t *oldlenp,
void *newval, size_t newlen)
{
struct __sysctl_args args =
{name,nlen,oldval,oldlenp,newval,newlen};
return _sysctl(&args);
}#define SIZE(x) sizeof(x)/sizeof(x[0])
#define OSNAMESZ 100
struct mystruct {
char osname[OSNAMESZ];
int osnamelth;
} myos;int name[] = { CTL_KERN, KERN_NODENAME };
int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
if (argc != 2) {
exit(0);
}
myos.osnamelth = SIZE(myos.osname);
if (sysctl(name, SIZE(name), myos.osname, &myos.osnamelth,
argv[1], strlen(argv[1])))
perror("sysctl");
else {
printf("Old host name: %s\n", myos.osname);
printf("New host name: %s\n", argv[1]);
}
return 0;
}Copy it to file sysctl-test.c, then
$ hostname mylocalmachine $ gcc sysctl-test.c $ ./a.out another Old host name: another New host name: another $
After apply this patch:
$ hostname mylocalmachine $ gcc sysctl-test.c $ ./a.out another Old host name: mylocalmachine New host name: another
kernel/sysctl.c renamed from kernel/sysctl.c.orig +1 -1
@@ -2223,7 +2223,7 @@ int sysctl_string(ctl_table *table, int len--; ((char *) table->data)[len] =0 ; } -return 0 ; +return 1 ; }/*