[5964] in bugtraq
Re: Linux inode.i_count overflow
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Casper Dik)
Thu Jan 15 02:56:45 1998
Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 22:25:32 +0100
Reply-To: Casper Dik <casper@HOLLAND.SUN.COM>
From: Casper Dik <casper@HOLLAND.SUN.COM>
To: BUGTRAQ@NETSPACE.ORG
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 14 Jan 1998 10:21:39 CST."
<Pine.SUN.3.94.980114102101.7898A-100000@dfw.dfw.net>
> Warning: This program will cause unpredictable behavior of the whole
> system!!!
>
> While killing this program kernel will print many messages:
>VFS: iput: trying to free free inode
I think the main error here is the way Linux handles this particular
condition.
Since the kernel has encountered an error conditions which indicates
an error it cannot recover from it should panic.
It should not continue, as that makes matters worse (making a denial
of service attack into a data corruption/security problem)
You should always check for errors, but you must make sure you handle them
properly.
Casper
