prlimit64: inconsistencies between kernel and userland

[Andreas Barth]

* Rich Felker (dalias@aerifal.cx) [131105 02:22]:
> On Tue, Nov 05, 2013 at 01:04:45AM +0000, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> > On Mon, 4 Nov 2013, David Miller wrote:
> > 
> > > From: Aurelien Jarno <aurelien@aurel32.net>
> > > Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 22:37:56 +0100
> > > 
> > > > Any news about this issue? It really starts to causes a lot of issues in
> > > > Debian. I have added a Cc: to libc people so that we can also hear their
> > > > opinion.
> > > 
> > > I had the same exact problem on sparc several years ago, I simply fixed
> > > the glibc header value, it's the only way to fix this.
> > > 
> > > Yes, that means you then have to recompile applications and libraries
> > > that reference this value.
> > 
> > Surely you can create new symbol versions for getrlimit64 and setrlimit64, 
> > with the old versions just using the 32-bit syscalls (or otherwise 
> > translating between conventions, but using the 32-bit syscalls is the 
> > simplest approach)?  I see no need to break compatibility with existing 
> > binaries.
> > 
> > As I noted in 
> > <https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-ports/2006-05/msg00020.html>, at that time 
> > the value of RLIM64_INFINITY for o32/n32 was purely a glibc convention the 
> > kernel didn't see at all.  It's only with the use of newer syscalls that 
> > this glibc convention is any sort of problem.
> 
> Why not just make them convert any value >= 0x7fffffffffffffff to
> infinity before making the syscall? There's certainly no meaningful
> use for finite values in that range...

Or just replace 0x7fffffffffffffff by kernels infinity - and still
fixing glibc, because the same value as the kernel should be the right
answer long term.


Andi