Re: Linux 2.6.20-rc7

["Alexander E. Patrakov" <patrakov@ums.usu.ru>]

H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 31 Jan 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>>> It would be interesting to know what the inode numbers are in the 
>>> image; also,
>>> what is the exact behaviour -- do you end up with a missing link, or 
>>> do both
>>> entries end up getting hard-linked to an empty file?
>>
>> Judging by the
>>
>>     request_module: runaway loop modprobe binfmt-0000
>>
>> one or more of the hardlinked binaries (modprobe being one, but not 
>> necessarily the one that initially triggers hits) will read all zeroes-
>>
>> Or at least bytes at offsets 2 and 3 will read as zero, causing it to 
>> not be recognized as a proper binary, causing that "binfmt-0000" thing.
>>
> 
> Or perhaps not read at all, which would explain the problem.
> 
> cpio represents a hard link as who headers with the same type and the 
> same file (inode) number and a link count that is > 1.  Only the first 
> one contains data; the subsequent ones have length 0.  It's fairly easy 
> for a bug in the decoder to truncate the file upon encountering the 
> second header, since this is somewhat of a special case (it would have 
> been better if the cpio format distinguished "hard link" explicitly, as 
> tar does.)
> 
> I will look into this as soon as I can, but as I'm currently in the 
> middle of job hunting it might take until the weekend.

What's the proper way to make sure that the fix, when it appears, ends up in 
my inbox?

-- 
Alexander E. Patrakov