Question

I’m writing a Linux module and getting:

Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference 

What does it mean?

Answer 1

Sounds like a pointer which currently has the NULL value (zero) is being dereferenced. Assign an address to the pointer before dereferencing it.

e.g.

int x = 5; int * x_ptr = NULL;  x_ptr = &x; // this line may be missing in your code  *x_ptr += 5; //can't dereference x_ptr here if x_ptr is still NULL