[dpdk-dev] [PATCH v2] rte_mempool_dump() crashes with NULL rte_mempool pointer.

[Bruce Richardson]

On Wed, Oct 01, 2014 at 11:02:27AM -0400, Neil Horman wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 01, 2014 at 03:36:45PM +0200, Thomas Monjalon wrote:
> > 2014-09-28 08:27, Neil Horman:
> > > On Sun, Sep 28, 2014 at 05:28:44AM +0000, Wiles, Roger Keith wrote:
> > > > Check the FILE *f and rte_mempool *mp pointers for NULL and
> > > > return plus print out a message if RTE_LIBRTE_MEMPOOL_DEBUG is enabled.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Keith Wiles <keith.wiles at windriver.com>
> > > 
> > > I'm fine with this, as I think passing in a NULL mempool is clearly a bug here,
> > > thats worth panicing over, though I wouldnt mind if we did a RTE_VERIFY_WARN
> > > macro here instead using what I suggested in my other note
> > 
> > Passing a NULL mempool to rte_mempool_dump() is a bug in the application.
> > If you look elsewhere in the DPDK code, you'll see that it's not common to do
> > such check on input parameters.
> > A similar discussion already happened few months ago:
> > 	http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/dev/2014-June/003900.html
> > 
> Not sure what your point is here Thomas.  I think we're all in agreement that
> NULL is a bad value to pass in here.  Are you asserting that we shouldn't bother
> with a NULL check at all and just accept the crash as it is?
>

In the general case:
* Code in the datapath should not have things like NULL checks
* However, datapath code should generally have a debug option which turns 
  these checks on to help debugging if needed. 
* Code not in the datapath probably should have these checks.

My 2c here

/Bruce