Re: OPcache should zero out cache slots?

From: Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2025 16:46:40 +0000
Subject: Re: OPcache should zero out cache slots?
References: 1 2  Groups: php.internals 
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On Mon, Mar 10, 2025, at 15:43, Ilija Tovilo wrote:
> Hi Rob
> 
> On Mon, Mar 10, 2025 at 9:23 AM Rob Landers <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > I’ve been trying to chase down a very subtle bug in 8.4 that only happens when OPcache
> > is enabled (I'm trying to create a reproducer to file an actual bug). From what I can tell,
> > OPcache doesn’t zero out cache slots, so occasionally, a cache slot will contain garbage that
> > happens to pass asserts/checks that causes the program to behave incorrectly. Without OPcache, cache
> > slots are always NULL if not set.
> >
> > It's quite rare to end up in that situation, though, but I was wondering if anyone
> > has any opinions on this?
> 
> I don't believe this is accurate. If we're talking about the cache
> used within the VM, "cache slots" are a contiguous list of arbitrary
> void pointers. The compiler tracks how many cache slots each function
> needs, but the actual array of pointers is allocated at runtime, in
> init_func_run_time_cache_i(), when the function is executed for the
> first time on each request. init_func_run_time_cache_i() zeros the
> cache with memset. If it wouldn't, we'd run into issues quickly,
> because a non-0 cache is generally interpreted as a primed cache.
> 
> Potentially, you might also be referring to the pointer map, which is
> a related concept. But this map is also zero'ed for each request (in
> zend_activate()).
> 
> If you think you might be dealing with uninitialized memory in your
> case, MemorySanitizer or Valgrind may help.
> 
> Does that help?
> 
> Ilija
> 

Thanks Ilija,

You are correct! This issue appears to be an "off-by-one" type error, so the data in the
cache slot is just something unexpected, which looks like garbage. I think I finally found the
issue, maybe... in zend_compile_static_call where the logic to determine the number of cache slots
is different from the logic to set the cache slots. At least, that is where I am at right now. But
that you for your help!

— Rob


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