On Nov 16 2004 a change to intelfbdrv.c was commited (as part of 0.9.2 it
looks like) that added __initdata to all of the module param variables that
seems to create the opportunity for an oops.
I've recently been chasing an OOPS
(http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=111552250920370&w=2) I
created by reading every file on the /sys file system and I've traced it
back to this code in the intelfbdrv. Though I had root privs in my initial
problem report, it turns out they are un-necessary to generate the oops -
all you've got to do is "cat /sys/module/intelfb/parameters/mode" enough
times and eventually it will oops.
This is because sysfs automatically exports all module_param declarations
to the sysfs file system.. which means those variables can be dynamically
evaluated at any later time, which of course means marking them __initdata
is a bad idea ;).. when they happen to be char *'s it is an especially bad
idea ;).
Applying the patch below clears up the OOPS for me.
Signed-off-by: Patrick McManus <mcmanus@ducksong.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Patrick McManus