linux-kernel - Re: The policy on initramfs decompression failure

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

Message-ID: <496D8E0D.5090401@knaff.lu>
Date:	Wed, 14 Jan 2009 08:02:37 +0100
From:	Alain Knaff <alain@...ff.lu>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>
CC:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Al Viro <viro@....linux.org.uk>
Subject: Re: The policy on initramfs decompression failure

Ingo Molnar wrote:
> And your argument makes little sense: if there is something wrong then one 
> looks at the logs _anyway_.

Unfortunately, not everybody has the knowledge or equipment ready to set
up a serial console... And logs in the classical sense (in a logfile...)
don't exist yet at that early stage of boot, because it happens _before_
the kernel is able to write to the filesystem...

> Are you suggesting that all warnings that 
> signal some potential badness should result in a panic? That is 
> nonsensical.

There must be some misunderstanding somewhere. I didn't make any such
suggestion. I agree with you, such a suggestion would be nonsensical.

> What you seem to be arguing for is to introduce a kernel option that says 
> "panic on warnings" - so that folks cannot miss warnings. _That_ would be 
> a fair argument.

That would be an interesting idea, but might lead to the opposite
problem (kernel stopping _before_ the real problem happens).

Maybe what we could do is "fix" panic() such that it doesn't disable
Shift-Pgup. But I admit that such a change may not be trivial to
implement, as there may be cases where the interrupt system is fubar,
and all interrupt handlers (including keyboard) would need to be disabled.

> Panics are rarely good, unless the user asks for it, period. We've been 
> flipping over BUG_ON()s to WARN_ON() everywhere where it matters in 
> practice.
> 
> 	Ingo

That is a valid philosophical discussion. But shouldn't we move it to a
thread of its own?

Regards,

Alain
--
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/