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From: Christian Lamparter <chunkeey@googlemail.com>
To: "Éric Piel" <Eric.Piel@tremplin-utc.net>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC v2] lis3lv02d: avoid divide by zero due to unchecked register read
Date: Wed, 18 May 2011 17:47:12 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <201105181747.12356.chunkeey@googlemail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <4DD2EC98.5080901@tremplin-utc.net>

On Tuesday 17 May 2011 23:46:00 Éric Piel wrote:
> Op 16-05-11 23:36, Christian Lamparter schreef:
> > On Monday 16 May 2011 13:16:46 Éric Piel wrote:
> >> Op 16-05-11 00:46, Christian Lamparter schreef:
> >>>  From my POV, it looks like the hardware is not working as expected
> >>> and returns a bogus data rate. The driver doesn't check the result
> >>> and directly uses it as some sort of divisor in some places:
> >>>
> >>> msleep(lis3->pwron_delay / lis3lv02d_get_odr());
> >>>
> >>> Under this circumstances, this could very well cause the
> >>> "divide by zero" exception from above.
> >>>
> >> However, I'd fix it a bit differently: let lis3lv02d_get_odr() return
> >> the raw data, and create a special function
> >> lis3lv02d_get_pwron_delay_ms() which does the "lis3->pwron_delay /
> >> lis3lv02d_get_odr()" with special handling for 0 (returning a large
> >> value and also sending a printk_once() ).
> > Do you know how "volatile" this data rate is? If it never changes
> > [at least it doesn't here?] then why not read it once in init_device
> > and store it in the device context?
> It is not normally changing, normally it is set just at init/unsuspend 
> (where the bios can also interfere sometimes) and when the user changes 
> it.
Uh, "bios can also interfere"... this sounds very bad. At least for
my x41t the bios doesn't care about hdaps once the OS is running.

> So definitely within the same function it's not going to suddenly 
> change.
a SMM can happen at any time and if a faulty BIOS [likely, since I got
a new laptop] is what caused the crash, I wouldn't bet on "const within
a function context".

> We could avoid calculating/checking it twice in 
> lis3lv02d_selftest(). Care to do a third version with this little clean up?
I have my doubts, but ok if you say so... Just one thing: need to do some Q&A
on the code above, I haven't tested it extensively yet.

Regards,
	Chr

  reply	other threads:[~2011-05-18 15:47 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-05-15 22:46 [PATCH] lis3lv02d: avoid divide by zero due to unchecked register read Christian Lamparter
2011-05-16 11:16 ` Éric Piel
2011-05-16 21:36   ` [RFC v2] " Christian Lamparter
2011-05-17 21:46     ` Éric Piel
2011-05-18 15:47       ` Christian Lamparter [this message]
2011-05-18 15:56         ` Éric Piel
2011-05-18 16:03           ` Christian Lamparter

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