linux-kernel - Re: The sheer number of sparse warnings in the kernel

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: <20140227095635.GA1816@gallifrey>
Date:	Thu, 27 Feb 2014 09:56:35 +0000
From:	"Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dave@...blig.org>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: The sheer number of sparse warnings in the kernel

* H. Peter Anvin (hpa@...or.com) wrote:
> The number of sparse errors in the current kernel is staggering, and it
> makes sparse a lot less valuable of a tool that it otherwise could be.
> On a build of x86-64 allyesconfig I'm getting 20,676 sparse messages.
> Out of those, 12,358 come from linux/err.h.  Given that the latter
> basically spams *everything*, I can only conclude that almost noone uses
> sparse unless they have a filter script.

I did a bit of sparse fixing a few years ago; my strategy then was to
get used to which types of warnings were more likely to be real
and ignore all the rest - it was the only way to find anything useful from
them.

There were some that were very fruitful; the warnings for gfp_t types were
great at spotting where someone had swapped the parameters to kmalloc
for example.

Dave
-- 
 -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code -------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert    |       Running GNU/Linux       | Happy  \ 
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org |                               | In Hex /
 \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/
--
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/