linux-kernel - Re: Bug#502583: scary messages in dmesg

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <2bfaaf400810211421i100d10fexbea8f74d86d813de@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Tue, 21 Oct 2008 18:21:58 -0300
From:	"Alexandre Lymberopoulos" <lymber@...il.com>
To:	"Theodore Tso" <tytso@....edu>,
	"Rogério Brito" <rbrito@....usp.br>,
	"Alexandre Lymberopoulos" <lymber@...il.com>,
	502583@...s.debian.org, 502583-submitter@...s.debian.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Bug#502583: scary messages in dmesg

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 9:33 AM, Theodore Tso <tytso@....edu> wrote:

> A patch to suppress the WARN information will be in 2.6.28 when the
> user does something stupid (i.e., yank out a USB stick without
> unmounting the filesystem first).  This was done mainly to suppress
> the "scary message" in dmesg, which on distributions that support
> uploading such messages to http://www.kerneloops.org for analysis, was
> cluttering the reports.

I don't think removing these messages is a good idea. It's good even
for non-developer users to have information about what is happening on
their systems. At least to know that they (me in that case) did
something stupid.

> However, the patch does not make it any *safer* to uncerimoniously
> yank out a USB stick without unmounting it first.  This can still lead
> to data loss, unless you're *sure* that no process is writing to the
> stick and you issued the sync command, and you know enough time has
> passed so all of the data has been written to the USB stick.

Another reason to keep these messages. To hide information without
provinding a solution (I can see none here, i´'s impossible to prevent
anyone from doing stupid things) is not a good idea, sounds like the
philosophy of other operating systems...

> If you see "lost page write due to I/O error", then you will have lost
> data due to premature removal of the USB stick, and fundamentally
> *that* bug exists between the keyboard and the chair.

;-)

> Regards,
>
>                                                - Ted

Sincerley, Alexandre
-- 
===============================================================================
Alexandre Lymberopoulos - lymber@...il.com
===============================================================================
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/