Patch series "drivers/char: remove /dev/kmem for good".
Exploring /dev/kmem and /dev/mem in the context of memory hot(un)plug and
memory ballooning, I started questioning the existence of /dev/kmem.
Comparing it with the /proc/kcore implementation, it does not seem to be
able to deal with things like
a) Pages unmapped from the direct mapping (e.g., to be used by secretmem)
-> kern_addr_valid(). virt_addr_valid() is not sufficient.
b) Special cases like gart aperture memory that is not to be touched
-> mem_pfn_is_ram()
Unless I am missing something, it's at least broken in some cases and might
fault/crash the machine.
Looks like its existence has been questioned before in 2005 and 2010 [1],
after ~11 additional years, it might make sense to revive the discussion.
CONFIG_DEVKMEM is only enabled in a single defconfig (on purpose or by
mistake?). All distributions disable it: in Ubuntu it has been disabled
for more than 10 years, in Debian since 2.6.31, in Fedora at least
starting with FC3, in RHEL starting with RHEL4, in SUSE starting from
15sp2, and OpenSUSE has it disabled as well.
1) /dev/kmem was popular for rootkits [2] before it got disabled
basically everywhere. Ubuntu documents [3] "There is no modern user of
/dev/kmem any more beyond attackers using it to load kernel rootkits.".
RHEL documents in a BZ [5] "it served no practical purpose other than to
serve as a potential security problem or to enable binary module drivers
to access structures/functions they shouldn't be touching"
2) /proc/kcore is a decent interface to have a controlled way to read
kernel memory for debugging puposes. (will need some extensions to
deal with memory offlining/unplug, memory ballooning, and poisoned
pages, though)
3) It might be useful for corner case debugging [1]. KDB/KGDB might be a
better fit, especially, to write random memory; harder to shoot
yourself into the foot.
4) "Kernel Memory Editor" [4] hasn't seen any updates since 2000 and seems
to be incompatible with 64bit [1]. For educational purposes,
/proc/kcore might be used to monitor value updates -- or older
kernels can be used.
5) It's broken on arm64, and therefore, completely disabled there.
Looks like it's essentially unused and has been replaced by better
suited interfaces for individual tasks (/proc/kcore, KDB/KGDB). Let's
just remove it.
[1] https://lwn.net/Articles/147901/
[2] https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10505
[3] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Features#A.2Fdev.2Fkmem_disabled
[4] https://sourceforge.net/projects/kme/
[5] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=154796
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210324102351.6932-1-david@redhat.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210324102351.6932-2-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: "Alexander A. Klimov" <grandmaster@al2klimov.de>
Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Alexandre Belloni <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>
Cc: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Cc: Andrey Zhizhikin <andrey.zhizhikin@leica-geosystems.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
Cc: Brian Cain <bcain@codeaurora.org>
Cc: Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@de.ibm.com>
Cc: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Cc: Chris Zankel <chris@zankel.net>
Cc: Corentin Labbe <clabbe@baylibre.com>
Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Cc: Gerald Schaefer <gerald.schaefer@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Greentime Hu <green.hu@gmail.com>
Cc: Gregory Clement <gregory.clement@bootlin.com>
Cc: Heiko Carstens <hca@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Helge Deller <deller@gmx.de>
Cc: Hillf Danton <hdanton@sina.com>
Cc: huang ying <huang.ying.caritas@gmail.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Cc: "James E.J. Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
Cc: James Troup <james.troup@canonical.com>
Cc: Jiaxun Yang <jiaxun.yang@flygoat.com>
Cc: Jonas Bonn <jonas@southpole.se>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Kairui Song <kasong@redhat.com>
Cc: Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
Cc: Kuninori Morimoto <kuninori.morimoto.gx@renesas.com>
Cc: Liviu Dudau <liviu.dudau@arm.com>
Cc: Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi@arm.com>
Cc: Luc Van Oostenryck <luc.vanoostenryck@gmail.com>
Cc: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>
Cc: Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@gmail.com>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@redhat.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Niklas Schnelle <schnelle@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Oleksiy Avramchenko <oleksiy.avramchenko@sonymobile.com>
Cc: openrisc@lists.librecores.org
Cc: Palmer Dabbelt <palmerdabbelt@google.com>
Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org>
Cc: "Pavel Machek (CIP)" <pavel@denx.de>
Cc: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Cc: "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Pierre Morel <pmorel@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Cc: Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>
Cc: Robert Richter <rric@kernel.org>
Cc: Rob Herring <robh@kernel.org>
Cc: Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
Cc: Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>
Cc: Sebastian Hesselbarth <sebastian.hesselbarth@gmail.com>
Cc: sparclinux@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Stafford Horne <shorne@gmail.com>
Cc: Stefan Kristiansson <stefan.kristiansson@saunalahti.fi>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Sudeep Holla <sudeep.holla@arm.com>
Cc: Theodore Dubois <tblodt@icloud.com>
Cc: Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@alpha.franken.de>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Vasily Gorbik <gor@linux.ibm.com>
Cc: Viresh Kumar <viresh.kumar@linaro.org>
Cc: William Cohen <wcohen@redhat.com>
Cc: Xiaoming Ni <nixiaoming@huawei.com>
Cc: Yoshinori Sato <ysato@users.sourceforge.jp>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
The Isicom driver was orphaned by commit d86b3001a1 (MAINTAINERS:
orphan isicom) 10 years ago. Noone stepped up to take care of them and
to fix all the issues the driver has.
So it's time to drop the driver with all its traces.
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210302062214.29627-6-jslaby@suse.cz
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
The Cyclades driver was orphaned by commit d459883e6c (MAINTAINERS:
remove two dead e-mail) 13 years ago. Noone stepped up to take care of
them and to fix all the issues the driver has.
On the top of that, there is no way to obtain the firmware for Z cards
from the vendor as cyclades.com ceased to exist.
So it's time to drop the driver with all its traces.
Signed-off-by: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210302062214.29627-5-jslaby@suse.cz
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Rationale:
Reduces attack surface on kernel devs opening the links for MITM
as HTTPS traffic is much harder to manipulate.
Deterministic algorithm:
For each file:
If not .svg:
For each line:
If doesn't contain `\bxmlns\b`:
For each link, `\bhttp://[^# \t\r\n]*(?:\w|/)`:
If both the HTTP and HTTPS versions
return 200 OK and serve the same content:
Replace HTTP with HTTPS.
Signed-off-by: Alexander A. Klimov <grandmaster@al2klimov.de>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200627072935.62652-1-grandmaster@al2klimov.de
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
A couple of locations accidentally misspelled snapshot as shapshot.
Signed-off-by: Jacob Keller <jacob.e.keller@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Describe how the comedi minor device numbers are split across comedi
devices and comedi subdevices.
Replace the current, long dead URL with an official URL for the Comedi
project.
Signed-off-by: Ian Abbott <abbotti@mev.co.uk>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Support for the Marvell MV64x60 line of bridge chips that contained
MPSC controllers has been removed and there are no other components
that have that controller so remove its driver.
Signed-off-by: Mark Greer <mgreer@animalcreek.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20190626160553.28518-1-mgreer@animalcreek.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Also mention that the traditional devices provide glyph values whereas
/dev/vcsu* is unicode based.
Suggested-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>
Signed-off-by: Nicolas Pitre <nico@linaro.org>
Reviewed-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert+renesas@glider.be>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
We've run into problems with running out of dynamicly assign char
device majors particullarly on automated test systems with
all-yes-configs. Roughly 40 dynamic assignments can be made with such
kernels at this time while space is reserved for only 20.
Currently, the kernel only prints a warning when dynamic allocation
overflows the reserved region. And when this happens drivers that have
fixed assignments can randomly fail depending on the order of
initialization of other drivers. Thus, adding a new char device can cause
unexpected failures in completely unrelated parts of the kernel.
This patch solves the problem by extending dynamic major number
allocations down from 511 once the 234-254 region fills up. Fixed
majors already exist above 255 so the infrastructure to support
high number majors is already in place. The patch reserves an
additional 128 major numbers which should hopefully last us a while.
Kernels that don't require more than 20 dynamic majors assigned (which
is pretty typical) should not be affected by this change.
Signed-off-by: Logan Gunthorpe <logang@deltatee.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Alan Cox <alan@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Cc: Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>
Link: https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/6/4/107
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Vhost-vsock is a software device so there is no probe call that causes
the driver to register its misc char device node. This creates a
chicken and egg problem: userspace applications must open
/dev/vhost-vsock to use the driver but the file doesn't exist until the
kernel module has been loaded.
Use the devname modalias mechanism so that /dev/vhost-vsock is created
at boot. The vhost_vsock kernel module is automatically loaded when the
first application opens /dev/host-vsock.
Note that the "reserved for local use" range in
Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt is incorrect. The userio driver
already occupies part of that range. I've updated the documentation
accordingly.
Cc: device@lanana.org
Signed-off-by: Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
