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From: erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com>
To: 9fans@9fans.net
Subject: [9fans] acid hack
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2011 20:30:39 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <bcb90c08dfecd770f70cc314a4d09bc3@coraid.com> (raw)

i was having some trouble with a user program that was setting
Proc.debugmem.  for various reasons it was easier to hack the
kernel than hack the program in question.  so i thought i'd
just get into the kernel and set Proc.debugmem = 0.

obviously, this doesn't work out-of-the-box, so i modified the
kernel a bit to allow writes.  (relax, it's normally compiled out ☺)
and it was easy enough to write a bit of acid

	p = (Proc)procalloc.ht[mypid % 128]
	while(p != 0 && p.pid != mypid) do p = p.pidhash

but how to set p.privatemem=0?  a first cut was to take

	p\X + y

where y was determined by grepping around in the kernel acid
file.  but this really is ugly, and hard to hand off to somebody else
as a "solution".  since -> is something wierd and . is taken, i used
the syntax

	x·y ≡ x\X + y

where y is the same value as before, e.g. offsetof(Proc, privatemem)

so now i can say

	*(p·privatemem) = 0

before jeering too much, consider that this also allows one to set
aggr members in user programs.  if you've got another solution that
looks better, doesn't require a rune, etc. i'd be happy to hear it.

so perhaps i'll define the "acid prize".  5 euros to the first person
to post a convincingly improved approach to the list.

- erik



                 reply	other threads:[~2011-10-26  0:30 UTC|newest]

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