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Re: prlimit64: inconsistencies between kernel and userland


On Mon, 4 Nov 2013, Rich Felker wrote:

> > Surely you can create new symbol versions for getrlimit64 and setrlimit64, 
> > with the old versions just using the 32-bit syscalls (or otherwise 
> > translating between conventions, but using the 32-bit syscalls is the 
> > simplest approach)?  I see no need to break compatibility with existing 
> > binaries.
> > 
> > As I noted in 
> > <https://sourceware.org/ml/libc-ports/2006-05/msg00020.html>, at that time 
> > the value of RLIM64_INFINITY for o32/n32 was purely a glibc convention the 
> > kernel didn't see at all.  It's only with the use of newer syscalls that 
> > this glibc convention is any sort of problem.
> 
> Why not just make them convert any value >= 0x7fffffffffffffff to
> infinity before making the syscall? There's certainly no meaningful
> use for finite values in that range...

It might be possible to do such a conversion in setrlimit64 - I'm not sure 
offhand if such a conversion for large finite values is valid, and a new 
symbol version is certainly the more conservative option - but getrlimit64 
in existing binaries should return results using the existing 
RLIM64_INFINITY, in case binaries compare against that, so if you change 
the header value to match the kernel I don't think you can avoid the new 
symbol version for getrlimit64, and versioning both together seems safer.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com


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