Re: linux-next: Tree for Jan 20 -- Kernel panic - Unable to mount root fs

Al Viro
2015-01-21T17:38:30Z

On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 11:16:23AM -0500, Paul Moore wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 04:54:07 PM Sabrina Dubroca wrote:
> > 2015-01-21, 16:39:12 +0100, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > That doesn't seem to help, at least in my case.
> >
> > Same here.
>
> Okay, thanks for trying. Sorry that didn't resolve things.
>
> > Well, it's probably not an audit issue. I tried audit=0 on the
> > commandline, and I just rebuilt a kernel with CONFIG_AUDIT=n, and it's
> > still panicing. This should have fixed any audit-related issue,
> > right?
>
> Most likely. Back to the code I go ...

FWIW, I really wonder if populate_rootfs() (run ultimately from
kernel_init(), by way of kernel_init_freeable(), do_basic_setup() and
do_initcalls()) ends up with some side effects as far as struct filename
are concerned...

Note that if we _ever_ hit reuse logics there, we are going to get bogus
matches asoddingplenty - *all* those sys_mkdir(), etc. are going to be
with filenames in the same reused buffer. So if anything in there leaks
from one call to another, we are going to have a mess on hands.

Another place where that can be a problem is devtmpfs - there's a kernel
thread doing actual mkdir, mknod, etc. in that abomination and if _that_
ends up accumulating aushit entries, we'll end up with interesting problems.

Folks, could you print the value of audit_dummy_context() in populate_rootfs()
and in drivers/base/devtmpfs.c:devtmpfsd()?