Re: [PATCH] alpha: kmalloc failure ignored in process_reloc_for_got()

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:40:10 +0200
Roel Kluin <roel.kluin@gmail.com> wrote:

> Prevent NULL dereference if kmalloc() fails.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Roel Kluin <roel.kluin@gmail.com>
> ---
> Found with sed: http://kernelnewbies.org/roelkluin
> 
> diff --git a/arch/alpha/kernel/module.c b/arch/alpha/kernel/module.c
> index ebc3c89..8ceec20 100644
> --- a/arch/alpha/kernel/module.c
> +++ b/arch/alpha/kernel/module.c
> @@ -73,6 +73,8 @@ process_reloc_for_got(Elf64_Rela *rela,
>  		}
>  
>  	g = kmalloc (sizeof (*g), GFP_KERNEL);
> +	if (g == NULL)
> +		return;
>  	g->next = chains[r_sym].next;
>  	g->r_addend = r_addend;
>  	g->got_offset = *poffset;

I don't know if that's an improvement.  afacit the kernel will now
blunder along and do something wrong.  An oops might well be
preferable behaviour.

IOW, we should handle this failure properly - back out, clean
everything up, return -ENOMEM to userspace