linux-kernel - Re: Formal description of system call interface

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Date:   Mon, 21 Nov 2016 16:17:43 +0100
From:   Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:     Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@...il.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Sasha Levin <levinsasha928@...il.com>,
        Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>,
        scientist@...com, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        "Carlos O'Donell" <carlos@...hat.com>,
        syzkaller <syzkaller@...glegroups.com>,
        Kostya Serebryany <kcc@...gle.com>,
        Mike Frysinger <vapier@...gle.com>,
        Dave Jones <davej@...emonkey.org.uk>,
        Tavis Ormandy <taviso@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: Formal description of system call interface

On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 6, 2016 at 2:39 PM, Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> This is notes from the discussion we had at Linux Plumbers this week
>> regarding providing a formal description of system calls (user API).
>>
>> The idea come up in the context of syzkaller, syscall fuzzer, which
>> has descriptions for 1000+ syscalls mostly concentrating on types of
>> arguments and return values. However, problems are that a small group
>> of people can't write descriptions for all syscalls; can't keep them
>> up-to-date and doesn't have necessary domain expertise to do correct
>> descriptions in some cases.
>>
>> We identified a surprisingly large number of potential users for such
>> descriptions:
>
> Let me add one more: consolidation of all the incompatible arch
> syscall tables.  A sufficiently descriptive format should be parseable
> at build time to generate the syscall tables.


Hi Andy,

What exactly info do we need for this?

Anything that just requires a bit of info per syscall looks like the
lowest hanging fruit
(as compared to info per every ioctl discrimination, and complete args
description).