[PATCH] dfu: Fix dfu_config_interfaces() for single interface DFU syntax

Mattijs Korpershoek mkorpershoek at kernel.org
Fri Jul 11 10:02:20 CEST 2025


Hi Sam,

Thank you for the patch.

On Tue, Jul 08, 2025 at 23:23, Sam Protsenko <semen.protsenko at linaro.org> wrote:

> As stated in DFU documentation [1], the device interface part might be
> missing in dfu_alt_info:
>
>     dfu_alt_info
>         The DFU setting for the USB download gadget with a semicolon
>         separated string of information on each alternate:
>             dfu_alt_info="<alt1>;<alt2>;....;<altN>"
>         When several devices are used, the format is:
>             - <interface> <dev>'='alternate list (';' separated)
>
> So in first case dfu_alt_info might look like something like this:
>
>     dfu_alt_info="mmc 0=rawemmc raw 0 0x747c000 mmcpart 1;"
>
> And in second case (when the interface is missing):
>
>     dfu_alt_info="rawemmc raw 0 0x747c000 mmcpart 1;"
>
> When the interface is not specified the 'dfu' command crashes when
> called using 'dfu 0' or 'dfu list' syntax:
>
>     => dfu list
>     "Synchronous Abort" handler, esr 0x96000006, far 0x0
>
> That's happening due to incorrect string handling in
> dfu_config_interfaces(). In case when the interface is not specified in
> dfu_alt_info it triggers this corner case:
>
>     d = strsep(&s, "=");  // now d contains s, and s is NULL
>     if (!d)
>         break;
>     a = strsep(&s, "&");  // s is already NULL, so a is NULL too
>     if (!a)               // corner case
>         a = s;            // a is NULL now
>
> which causes NULL pointer dereference later in this call, due to 'a'
> being NULL:
>
>     part = skip_spaces(part);
>
> That's because as per strsep() behavior, when delimiter ("&") is not
> found, the token (a) becomes the entire string (s), and string (s)
> becomes NULL. To fix that issue assign "a = d" instead of "a = s",
> because at that point variable d actually contains previous s, which
> should be used in this case.
>
> [1] doc/usage/dfu.rst
>
> Fixes: commit febabe3ed4f4 ("dfu: allow to manage DFU on several devices")
> Signed-off-by: Sam Protsenko <semen.protsenko at linaro.org>

Good catch! I can indeed reproduce this on sandbox after enabling
CMD_DFU:

$ ./u-boot -T

[...]

=> setenv dfu_alt_info "rawemmc raw 0 0x747c000 mmcpart 1;"
=> dfu list
[1]    116917 segmentation fault (core dumped)  ./u-boot -T

And I confirm it's fixed with this patch.

Thanks for all the details, it makes the review and the testing
so much easier!

Reviewed-by: Mattijs Korpershoek <mkorpershoek at kernel.org>

> ---
>  drivers/dfu/dfu.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/dfu/dfu.c b/drivers/dfu/dfu.c
> index 756569217bbb..eefdf44ec877 100644
> --- a/drivers/dfu/dfu.c
> +++ b/drivers/dfu/dfu.c
> @@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ int dfu_config_interfaces(char *env)
>  			break;
>  		a = strsep(&s, "&");
>  		if (!a)
> -			a = s;
> +			a = d;
>  		do {
>  			part = strsep(&a, ";");
>  			part = skip_spaces(part);
> -- 
> 2.39.5


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