Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
perf header: Fix use of unitialized value warning
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
When building our local version of perf with MSAN (Memory Sanitizer) and
running the perf record command, MSAN throws a use of uninitialized
value warning in "tools/perf/util/util.c:333:6".

This warning stems from the "buf" variable being passed into "write".
It originated as the variable "ev" with the type union perf_event*
defined in the "perf_event__synthesize_attr" function in
"tools/perf/util/header.c".

In the "perf_event__synthesize_attr" function they allocate space with a malloc
call using ev, then go on to only assign some of the member variables before
passing "ev" on as a parameter to the "process" function therefore "ev"
contains uninitialized memory. Changing the malloc call to zalloc to initialize
all the members of "ev" which gets rid of the warning.

To reproduce this warning, build perf by running:
make -C tools/perf CLANG=1 CC=clang EXTRA_CFLAGS="-fsanitize=memory\
 -fsanitize-memory-track-origins"

(Additionally, llvm might have to be installed and clang might have to
be specified as the compiler - export CC=/usr/bin/clang)

then running:
tools/perf/perf record -o - ls / | tools/perf/perf --no-pager annotate\
 -i - --stdio

Please see the cover letter for why false positive warnings may be
generated.

Signed-off-by: Numfor Mbiziwo-Tiapo <[email protected]>
Cc: Alexander Shishkin <[email protected]>
Cc: Ian Rogers <[email protected]>
Cc: Jiri Olsa <[email protected]>
Cc: Mark Drayton <[email protected]>
Cc: Namhyung Kim <[email protected]>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <[email protected]>
Cc: Song Liu <[email protected]>
Cc: Stephane Eranian <[email protected]>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <[email protected]>
  • Loading branch information
nums11 authored and acmel committed Jul 29, 2019
1 parent 7622236 commit 20f9781
Showing 1 changed file with 1 addition and 1 deletion.
2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion tools/perf/util/header.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -3646,7 +3646,7 @@ int perf_event__synthesize_attr(struct perf_tool *tool,
size += sizeof(struct perf_event_header);
size += ids * sizeof(u64);

ev = malloc(size);
ev = zalloc(size);

if (ev == NULL)
return -ENOMEM;
Expand Down

0 comments on commit 20f9781

Please sign in to comment.