Modinfo segment fault if failed to open module file.

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.1
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Package: module-init-tools

Issue

  • LC not capturing sosreports from every hypervisor
  • modinfo mlx4_ib segment fault
  • Segmentation fault occurs on modinfo when sosreport is running.

Resolution

  • This issue is resolved in module-init-tools-3.9-22.el6 and later.

  • For 6.4.z, install module-init-tools-3.9-21.el6_4 from Errata RHBA-2013:0961 (private bug 972588)

  • As a workaround, when running sosreport, turn off the modinfo report:

# sosreport -k kernel.modinfo=off

Root Cause

When modinfo is unable to find the kernel module file, it attempts to output a warning message in the function grab_module. However, it incorrectly failed to dereference a pointer leading to modinfo hitting a segment fault.

sosreport fails if modinfo fails.

Diagnostic Steps

  • Gather a core file and check for a stack trace with this signature.
Core was generated by `/sbin/modinfo iptable_filter ip_tables nfsd lockd nfs_acl auth_rpcgss exportfs'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0  0x00000035998480ac in _IO_vfprintf_internal (s=<value optimized out>, format=<value optimized out>, ap=<value optimized out>) at vfprintf.c:1641
1641              process_string_arg (((struct printf_spec *) NULL));
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00000035998480ac in _IO_vfprintf_internal (s=<value optimized out>, format=<value optimized out>, ap=<value optimized out>) at vfprintf.c:1641
#1  0x0000003599901e6c in __vasprintf_chk (result_ptr=0x7fff6f325af8, flags=1, format=0x40e3d0 "modinfo: could not open %s: %s\n", args=0x7fff6f325b20) at vasprintf_chk.c:68
#2  0x000000000040c05e in vasprintf (prefix=0x414306 "ERROR: ", fmt=<value optimized out>, arglist=<value optimized out>) at /usr/include/bits/stdio2.h:199
#3  message (prefix=0x414306 "ERROR: ", fmt=<value optimized out>, arglist=<value optimized out>) at ../logging.c:24
#4  0x000000000040c243 in error (fmt=<value optimized out>) at ../logging.c:56
#5  0x0000000000401805 in grab_module (name=<value optimized out>, kernel=<value optimized out>, basedir=<value optimized out>) at ../modinfo.c:244
#6  0x0000000000401d92 in main (argc=36, argv=<value optimized out>) at ../modinfo.c:305

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