From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760868AbXGFFoS (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Jul 2007 01:44:18 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1753912AbXGFFoI (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Jul 2007 01:44:08 -0400 Received: from gw.goop.org ([64.81.55.164]:59738 "EHLO mail.goop.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1754458AbXGFFoH (ORCPT ); Fri, 6 Jul 2007 01:44:07 -0400 Message-ID: <468DD6A5.4020705@goop.org> Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 22:44:05 -0700 From: Jeremy Fitzhardinge User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 (X11/20070615) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dan Kegel CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Robert Walsh Subject: Re: Valgrinding the kernel? References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Dan Kegel wrote: > It'd be nice to see if Valgrind could catch uninitialized > references in the kernel, if only to see if Coverity is > missing anything that happens in practice. > > Back in December 2002, Valgrind started to run UML: > http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/diary.html > http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=104035199923121&w=2 > but it wasn't quite usable, and it seems broken since then. > The last note I could find about this was from Jeff In July 2005: > http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=112273702329952&w=2 > > Has there been any motion since then? Not that I know of. I think all the pieces are in place now. The original problem was that Valgrind didn't deal with clone and didn't have accurate signal support. I fixed that. Then the problem was dealing with the densely packed small kernel stacks. Valgrind now has a way of registering stack regions, so that it can distinguish between a stack switch and a normal function call. So, I think all it needs now is to scatter some valgrind client requests around the kernel and give it a spin. See, simple ;) J