[Virtual-pkg-base-maintainers] Bug#425592: grep segfaults and causes oops

[Patrick Carter]

Package: base
Version: 4.0 (etch)
Severity: Important

Running the following command (as root)caused grep to cause a segmentation 
fault and a kernel oops.

 	grep -ri "wiki" /

Below is the relevant dmesg output:

======================================[BEGIN PASTE]=====================================
BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 448910f0
  printing eip:
c018da88
*pde = 00000000
Oops: 0000 [#1]
SMP
Modules linked in: nfs ipv6 nfsd exportfs lockd nfs_acl sunrpc appletalk 
dm_snapshot dm_mirror dm_mod loop ad1848 uart401 sound snd_opl3_lib 
snd_hwdep snd_cs4231_lib snd_pcm snd_timer snd_page_alloc snd_mpu401_uart 
snd_rawmidi snd_seq_device ns558 snd gameport i2c_piix4 soundcore rtc 
parport_pc parport psmouse intel_agp i2c_core ide_floppy floppy shpchp 
pci_hotplug agpgart pcspkr evdev ext3 jbd mbcache ide_cd cdrom ide_disk 
generic piix ide_core 3c59x mii uhci_hcd usbcore processor
CPU:    0
EIP:    0060:[<c018da88>]    Not tainted VLI
EFLAGS: 00010202   (2.6.18-4-686 #1)
EIP is at sysfs_open_file+0x8d/0x166
eax: 448910ec   ebx: c1512114   ecx: c02dc014   edx: 00000000
esi: d7fb49e8   edi: d7fb49e8   ebp: e09857b4   esp: d7e1def8
ds: 007b   es: 007b   ss: 0068
Process grep (pid: 2589, ti=d7e1c000 task=d9162550 task.ti=d7e1c000)
Stack: d7a9f0e0 d7a9f0e0 d7fb49e8 b7fbaff4 c018d9fb c0158b69 c147a1a0 
d7fb3a9c
        d7a9f0e0 d7e1df3c b7fbaff4 00000003 c0158cb1 d7a9f0e0 00000000 
00008000
        c0158ceb d7fb3a9c c147a1a0 0f1282d5 4652ef26 0f1282d5 00000101 
00000001
Call Trace:
  [<c018d9fb>] sysfs_open_file+0x0/0x166
  [<c0158b69>] __dentry_open+0xc8/0x1ac
  [<c0158cb1>] nameidata_to_filp+0x19/0x28
  [<c0158ceb>] do_filp_open+0x2b/0x31
  [<c0161f5c>] sys_stat64+0x1e/0x23
  [<c0158d2f>] do_sys_open+0x3e/0xb3
  [<c0158dd1>] sys_open+0x16/0x18
  [<c0102c11>] sysenter_past_esp+0x56/0x79
Code: 04 85 d2 74 1f 89 e0 25 00 e0 ff ff 83 3a 02 8b 40 10 0f 84 cb 00 00 
00 c1 e0 05 8d 84 10 20 01 00 00 ff 00 8b 45 28 85 c0 74 07 <8b> 40 04 85 
c0 75 0c 8b 45 2c be 94 0a 2d c0 85 c0 74 07 8b 70
EIP: [<c018da88>] sysfs_open_file+0x8d/0x166 SS:ESP 0068:d7e1def8
======================================[END PASTE]===================================


This bug has been readily reproducible.  My suspicion is that it is 
caused by grep improperly handling special system files.  If there exists 
a trivial method of detecting these files it should probably be used to 
tell grep to ignore them until better error handling can be implemented.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
   APT prefers stable
   APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)