Re: [Linaro-mm-sig] [PATCHv3 2/2] staging: android: ion: Add ioctl to query available heaps

On Wednesday, September 7, 2016 11:49:59 AM CEST Laura Abbott wrote:

• if (dir & _IOC_WRITE)

• if (copy_from_user(&data, (void __user *)arg, _IOC_SIZE(cmd)))
  

• 	return -EFAULT;
  

• /*

• * The copy_from_user is unconditional here for both read and write
  

• * to do the validate. If there is no write for the ioctl, the
  

• * buffer is cleared
  

• */
  

• if (copy_from_user(&data, (void __user *)arg, _IOC_SIZE(cmd)))

• return -EFAULT;
  

• ret = validate_ioctl_arg(cmd, &data);
• if (WARN_ON_ONCE(ret))

• return ret;
  

I noticed that the WARN_ON_ONCE warns about invalid user input, but I think we tend to normally just use WARN_ON for things that go wrong inside of the kernel or in hardware.

Maybe better use printk_once() or printk_ratelimited.

Is there any noticeable overhead in always copying the structure? copy_from_user() can be a bit slow depending on debugging or security features, and it seems unnecessary if the validation is only done for one of the commands.

Otherwise the patch looks good to me.

Arnd