From: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
To: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>,
Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-man@vger.kernel.org,
oss-security@lists.openwall.com
Subject: [patch] proc.5: tell how to parse /proc/*/stat correctly
Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2022 19:42:53 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <Y6SJDbKBk471KE4k@p183> (raw)
/proc/*/stat can't be parsed with split() or split(" ") or split(' ')
or sscanf("%d (%s) ...") or equivalents because "comm" can contain
whitespace and parenthesis and is not escaped by the kernel.
BTW escaping would not help with naive split() anyway.
Mention strrchr(')') so people can at least stop adding new bugs.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
---
man5/proc.5 | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
--- a/man5/proc.5
+++ b/man5/proc.5
@@ -2092,6 +2092,11 @@ Strings longer than
.B TASK_COMM_LEN
(16) characters (including the terminating null byte) are silently truncated.
This is visible whether or not the executable is swapped out.
+
+Note that \fIcomm\fP can contain space and closing parenthesis characters.
+Parsing /proc/${pid}/stat with split() or equivalent, or scanf(3) isn't
+reliable. The correct way is to locate closing parenthesis with strrchr(')')
+from the end of the buffer and parse integers from there.
.TP
(3) \fIstate\fP \ %c
One of the following characters, indicating process state:
next reply other threads:[~2022-12-22 16:43 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 21+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2022-12-22 16:42 Alexey Dobriyan [this message]
2022-12-22 22:03 ` [oss-security] [patch] proc.5: tell how to parse /proc/*/stat correctly Dominique Martinet
2022-12-22 23:21 ` Solar Designer
2022-12-23 0:15 ` Dominique Martinet
2022-12-23 0:21 ` Jan Engelhardt
2022-12-28 0:44 ` Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM)
2022-12-28 1:50 ` Tavis Ormandy
2022-12-30 20:15 ` Jakub Wilk
2022-12-28 15:24 ` Shawn Webb
2022-12-28 15:31 ` Shawn Webb
2022-12-28 16:47 ` Demi Marie Obenour
2022-12-28 17:09 ` Jan Engelhardt
2022-12-28 17:25 ` Shawn Webb
2022-12-28 18:02 ` Demi Marie Obenour
2022-12-28 18:36 ` John Helmert III
2022-12-28 19:24 ` Shawn Webb
2022-12-28 19:57 ` Alejandro Colomar
2022-12-28 22:14 ` Theodore Ts'o
2022-12-29 0:33 ` Demi Marie Obenour
2022-12-31 16:31 ` David Laight
2022-12-31 17:27 ` Solar Designer
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