Question

When my TimerExpire function is finally called when the timer ticks out, it prints out gibberish. Anyone know why? But my printk function in IOCTL_MAKE_TIMER prints out correctly, so I think it’s because I’m passing in the data wrong.

setup_timer() works by setting up the timer in the first argument, telling it to call the function specified by the second argument, and passes the data (which is the third argument), to that function.

In my case, it is calling the TimerExpire(char* data) function, passing to it final_arg, which is a char* to kern_arg. I even tried passing kern_arg directly to the function… also gave me gibberish.

Previously (yesterday), I had char* kern_arg, instead of char kern_arg[], and that worked out perfectly, but I think it was unsafe.

If anyone could provide some insight, that would be amazing! Thanks!

//Necessary Includes For Device Drivers.
#include <linux/init.h>
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
#include <linux/fs.h>
#include <linux/errno.h>
#include <linux/proc_fs.h>
#include <asm/uaccess.h>
#include <linux/timer.h>
#include <linux/ioctl.h>

#define DEVICE_NAME "mytimer"
#define DEVICE_FILE_NAME "mytimer"
#define MAJOR_NUM 61
#define MINOR_NUM 0
#define SUCCESS 0
#define IOCTL_MAKE_TIMER _IOWR(MAJOR_NUM, 0, int)
#define IOCTL_SET_TIMER _IOWR(MAJOR_NUM, 1, int)
#define IOCTL_GET_TIMER _IOWR(MAJOR_NUM, 2, int)


//Module License
MODULE_LICENSE("Dual BSD/GPL");

//Initialize timer structure.
static struct timer_list my_timer;

//Forward Declarations for File Operation Functions and Other Functions.
static int mytimer_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file);
static int mytimer_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *file);
int mytimer_ioctl(struct inode *inode, struct file *file, unsigned int ioctl_num, unsigned long args);
void TimerExpire(char* data);

//Syscall Operations for the module.
struct file_operations FileOps = 
{
    .owner = THIS_MODULE,
    .open = mytimer_open,
    .release = mytimer_release,
    .ioctl = mytimer_ioctl
};

//Syscall function for opening the module.
static int mytimer_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
{
    try_module_get(THIS_MODULE);

    return SUCCESS;
}

//Syscall function for releasing the module.
static int mytimer_release(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
{
    module_put(THIS_MODULE);

    return SUCCESS;
}

//Syscall function for controlling the module through IOCTLs.
int mytimer_ioctl(struct inode *inode, struct file *file, unsigned int fcn, unsigned long args)
{
    //Copies the function parameters from userspace to kernel space in order to use them in the kernel module.
    char* user_arg = args;
    char kern_arg[strlen_user(user_arg)];
    copy_from_user(kern_arg, user_arg, strlen_user(user_arg));
    char* final_arg = kern_arg;

    //If there is a timer, and the command is to make a new one, the old timer will be removed so a new one can be setup.
    if (timer_pending(&my_timer) && fcn == IOCTL_MAKE_TIMER)
{
    del_timer_sync(&my_timer);
    printk("Timer already exists. Deleting old timer and setting new timer.\n");
}

//Switch function that serves the function that is called.
//Note that the make and set timer functions are separate. This is because only 1 arg is passed via ioctl at a time, so I had to make two different ioctl calls.
switch (fcn)
{
    //Make a new timer.
    case IOCTL_MAKE_TIMER:
        setup_timer(&my_timer, TimerExpire, final_arg);
        printk("Made timer with message: %s\n", final_arg);
        break;

    //Set the timer made above.
    case IOCTL_SET_TIMER:           
        mod_timer(&my_timer, jiffies + msecs_to_jiffies(args * 1000));
        printk("Armed timer for %d seconds.\n", args);
        break;

    //Print the current timer, if any.
    case IOCTL_GET_TIMER:
        if (!timer_pending(&my_timer))
        {
            printk("No timer currently set.\n");
        }           
        else
        {
            printk("Time left in timer: %u seconds\n", jiffies_to_msecs(my_timer.expires - jiffies)/1000);
            printk("Message in timer is: %s\n", my_timer.data);
        }
        break;
}

return SUCCESS;
}


//Function to perform when timer expires.
void TimerExpire(char* data)
{
    printk("%s\n", data);
}

//Module Init and Exit Functions.
int init_module(void)
{
printk("Loading MyTimer Kernel Module...\n");
    //Register the device with the system to obtain the major number and register the file operations for syscall functionality.
int initResult = register_chrdev(MAJOR_NUM, "mytimer", &FileOps);

    //If we couldn't register the device, print the error.
    if (initResult < 0)
    {
    printk("Cannot obtain major number %d\n", MAJOR_NUM);

    return initResult;
    }

    printk("Please create device file using:\n\tmknod /dev/mytimer c 61 0\n");

    return SUCCESS;
}
void cleanup_module(void)
{
    //Unregister the device with the system to free the major number.
    printk("Unloading MyTimer Kernel Module...\n");
    unregister_chrdev(MAJOR_NUM, "mytimer");
    printk("MyTimer Kernel Module Unloaded.\n");
}

Answer 1

In this code, a call to ioctl(fd,IOCTL_MAKE_TIMER,...) passes setup_timer() a pointer to an array located on the kernel stack, then returns. By the point that the timer expires, the memory that used to hold that array has probably been reused.

You need to keep the memory around until after the timer expires. You could do this by allocating a buffer on the kernel heap (e.g. kmalloc()) or using static/global data.