Re: [PATCH 04/10] x86: mce: fix error handling

[Borislav Petkov <bp@amd64.org>]

From: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Date: Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 05:51:00AM -0400

> 
> > IMO memmory allocation fails are dangerous in kernel mode. As it is
> > probably not exploitable because of boot time, it can destroy some
> > sensitive data like dirty disk caches those are going to be written on
> > disk.
> 
> It's true for runtime, but not for normal boot time.
> 
> Anyways if it happens on boot time the only thing you can do is panic, 
> but someone else
> will likely panic anyways for you. Just ignoring it like your patch 
> effectively does
> (because nothing will ever look at the ENOMEMs for an initcall)

Not true, initcall_debug will at least dump the -ENOMEM or the other
-E's if enabled on the cmdline. So even only for that case does the
patch make sense.

It's a whole different question whether it actually is prudent to turn
on error reporting of failed initcalls unconditionally.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.

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