Add '-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks' to gcc CFLAGS
authorEugene Teo <eteo@redhat.com>
Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:59:10 +0000 (14:59 +0800)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Thu, 16 Jul 2009 16:19:16 +0000 (09:19 -0700)
Turning on this flag could prevent the compiler from optimising away
some "useless" checks for null pointers.  Such bugs can sometimes become
exploitable at compile time because of the -O2 optimisation.

See http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.1.2/gcc/Optimize-Options.html

An example that clearly shows this 'problem' is commit 6bf67672.

 static void __devexit agnx_pci_remove(struct pci_dev *pdev)
 {
     struct ieee80211_hw *dev = pci_get_drvdata(pdev);
-    struct agnx_priv *priv = dev->priv;
+    struct agnx_priv *priv;
     AGNX_TRACE;

     if (!dev)
         return;
+    priv = dev->priv;

By reverting this patch, and compile it with and without
-fno-delete-null-pointer-checks flag, we can see that the check for dev
is compiled away.

    call    printk  #
-   testq   %r12, %r12  # dev
-   je  .L94    #,
    movq    %r12, %rdi  # dev,

Clearly the 'fix' is to stop using dev before it is tested, but building
with -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks flag at least makes it harder to
abuse.

Signed-off-by: Eugene Teo <eugeneteo@kernel.sg>
Acked-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Wang Cong <amwang@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Makefile

index be0abac..79957b3 100644 (file)
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -343,7 +343,8 @@ KBUILD_CPPFLAGS := -D__KERNEL__
 KBUILD_CFLAGS   := -Wall -Wundef -Wstrict-prototypes -Wno-trigraphs \
                   -fno-strict-aliasing -fno-common \
                   -Werror-implicit-function-declaration \
-                  -Wno-format-security
+                  -Wno-format-security \
+                  -fno-delete-null-pointer-checks
 KBUILD_AFLAGS   := -D__ASSEMBLY__
 
 # Read KERNELRELEASE from include/config/kernel.release (if it exists)