crash utility invoked with wrong arguments can consume all available memory

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 Service Pack 4

Situation

Crash is a tool for interactively analyzing the state of the Linux system while it is running, or after a kernel crash has occurred and a core dump has been created.

If crash is invoked with a wrong set of arguments, it can consume all available memory and the machine will be unusable until hard rebootet.

Example for a bad invocation (do NOT use this!):

crash vmlinux-2.6.16.60-0.39.3-smp vmlinux-2.6.16.60-0.39.3-kdump vmcore

Instead a correct command would be:

crash /boot/System.map-2.6.16.60-0.39.3-smp vmlinux-2.6.16.60-0.39.3-kdump vmcore

Resolution

Issue is reported to development, release date of a fixed version of the crash utility is unknown at the moment.

See the manpage for crash for further information about how to use it correctly.

man 8 crash

crash versions up to and including at least crash-4.0.4.10-4.12.1 are affected.

Disclaimer

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