Skip to content
  • Davide Libenzi's avatar
    make timerfd return a u64 and fix the __put_user · 09828402
    Davide Libenzi authored
    
    
    Davi fixed a missing cast in the __put_user(), that was making timerfd
    return a single byte instead of the full value.
    
    Talking with Michael about the timerfd man page, we think it'd be better to
    use a u64 for the returned value, to align it with the eventfd
    implementation.
    
    This is an ABI change.  The timerfd code is new in 2.6.22 and if we merge this
    into 2.6.23 then we should also merge it into 2.6.22.x.  That will leave a few
    early 2.6.22 kernels out in the wild which might misbehave when a future
    timerfd-enabled glibc is run on them.
    
    mtk says: The difference would be that read() will only return 4 bytes, while
    the application will expect 8.  If the application is checking the size of
    returned value, as it should, then it will be able to detect the problem (it
    could even be sophisticated enough to know that if this is a 4-byte return,
    then it is running on an old 2.6.22 kernel).  If the application is not
    checking the return from read(), then its 8-byte buffer will not be filled --
    the contents of the last 4 bytes will be undefined, so the u64 value as a
    whole will be junk.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarDavide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org>
    Cc: Michael Kerrisk <mtk-manpages@gmx.net>
    Cc: Davi Arnaut <davi@haxent.com.br>
    Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    09828402