Possible bug in getdents64()?

Alejandro Colomar colomar.6.4.3@gmail.com
Thu Oct 29 11:12:11 GMT 2020



On 2020-10-29 12:09, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Alejandro Colomar via Libc-alpha:
> 
>> [[ CC += linux-man, linux-kernel, libc-alpha, mtk ]]
>>
>> On 2020-10-28 20:26, Alejandro Colomar wrote:
>>> The manual page for getdents64() says the prototype should be the
>>> following:
>>>          int getdents64(unsigned int fd, struct linux_dirent64 *dirp,
>>>                       unsigned int count);
>>>
>>> Note the type of 'count': 'unsigned int'
>>> (usually a 32-bit unsigned integer).
>>> And the Linux kernel seems to use those types (fs/readdir.c:351):
>>> SYSCALL_DEFINE3(getdents64, unsigned int, fd,
>>>           struct linux_dirent64 __user *, dirent,
>>>           unsigned int, count)
>>> {
>>> ...
>>> }
>>> But glibc uses 'size_t' (usually a 64-bit unsigned integer)
>>> for the parameter 'count' (sysdeps/unix/linux/getdents64.c:25):
>>>
>>> /* The kernel struct linux_dirent64 matches the 'struct dirent64' type.  */
>>> ssize_t
>>> __getdents64 (int fd, void *buf, size_t nbytes)
>>> {
>>>     /* The system call takes an unsigned int argument, and some length
>>>        checks in the kernel use an int type.  */
>>>     if (nbytes > INT_MAX)
>>>       nbytes = INT_MAX;
>>>     return INLINE_SYSCALL_CALL (getdents64, fd, buf, nbytes);
>>> }
>>> libc_hidden_def (__getdents64)
>>> weak_alias (__getdents64, getdents64)
>>>
>>> Isn't it undefined behavior to pass a variable of a different
>>> (larger) type to a variadic function than what it expects?
>>> Is that behavior defined in this implementation?
>>> Wouldn't a cast to 'unsigned int' be needed?
> 
> There is no variadic function involved here.  INLINE_SYSCALL_CALL takes
> care of the zero extension to the register internally, irrespective of
> the argument type.  (The register is of type long int or long long int,
> depending on the architecture.)

Hi Florian,

Thank you very much!

Alex

> 
> Thanks,
> Florian
> 


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