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From: stesin@elvisti.kiev.ua (Andrew V. Stesin)
Subject: [?!] So, is this a bug in the kernel execve() code?
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Message-ID: <D1351I.AM5@store.elvisti.kiev.ua>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 01:20:06 GMT
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Hi BSDers,
as I wrote a few days ago, there was a strange thing noticed
with FreeBSD-1.1.5R. Here is an (incorrect, I know! ;) program in C:
int
main (int ac, char **av)
{
return (execve("/bin/ls", av[1], 0));
}
anyway, given some command line parameters, this reboots the system
immediately on our machine.
Your mileage may vary -- this is the shortest example from the set.
I can describe this as:
broken arguments to execve() system call,
like nonterminated argv[] array, or random arguments, --
may _often_ cause the immediate and silent OS reboot on our system.
This effect was discovered by Natalie Vinokurova, nata@bitmcnit.bryansk.su.
We tried to reproduce her example and (after a few attempts with "Bus error"
and segfaults) we found it... for a pity... :(
I tried to dig into that piece of kernel code, but sorry -- I'm not
a wisard, I'm not a kernel hacker, I'm not even on a mailing list.
I personally have no idea about how legal this behavior is and how to
fix it. I don't even know -- was this reported yet or not?
So, questions.
1. How valid the described behavior is? If it isn't considered
valid, how one can fix it?
2. Is there a set of "official" patches for 1.1.5? Where?
We're running vanilla 1.1.5.0 kernel, I only replaced
some user-area utilities. Maybe some bugfix patches are
needed?
Thanks for your attention; comments and suggestions are welcome!
--
With best wishes -- Andrew Stesin,
system administrator.