One of idiomatic ways to duplicate a region of memory is
dst = kmalloc(len, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!dst)
return -ENOMEM;
memcpy(dst, src, len);
which is neat code except a programmer needs to write size twice. Which
sometimes leads to mistakes. If len passed to kmalloc is smaller that len
passed to memcpy, it's straight overwrite-beyond-end. If len passed to
memcpy is smaller than len passed to kmalloc, it's either a) legit
behaviour ;-), or b) cloned buffer will contain garbage in second half.
Slight trolling of commit lists shows several duplications bugs
done exactly because of diverged lenghts:
Linux:
[CRYPTO]: Fix memcpy/memset args.
[PATCH] memcpy/memset fixes
OpenBSD:
kerberosV/src/lib/asn1: der_copy.c:1.4
If programmer is given only one place to play with lengths, I believe, such
mistakes could be avoided.
With kmemdup, the snippet above will be rewritten as:
dst = kmemdup(src, len, GFP_KERNEL);
if (!dst)
return -ENOMEM;
This also leads to smaller code (kzalloc effect). Quick grep shows
200+ places where kmemdup() can be used.
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
1a2f67b459