c: set malloc'd array element to NULL (invalid write)

Question

I am working with parallel processes, and in one part of my code I want to fork a new process that calls the same program with slightly different arguments. For example, if the user initially called "./prog arg1 arg2 arg3", I would like to fork a new process that execs "./prog -n 1 arg2 arg3" and then that program would fork and exec "./prog -n 2 arg3." The only way I can think of doing this is using execv(), but I'm running into issues because execv requires that the last element in the argv[] array passed to it be NULL. Below is my code, and I will post the valgrind output below that.

        //fork an additional process: ./prog -n (i+1) args...
        //  could accomplish by execv("./prog", paramlist), where paramlist is
        //      the same as -n (i+1) and then argv, skipping argv[1]

        //create new paramlist
        char **params = malloc(sizeof(char*) * argc + 2 );

        sprintf(numbuf, "%d", i+1);

        //./prog -n (i+1) argv[2:argc-1]
        params[0] = argv[0];
        params[1] = "-n";
        params[2] = numbuf;
        for(int i = 2; i<argc; i++){    //skip argv[0] bc we already assigned it
            params[i+1] = argv[i];      //skip argv[1] because we just worked on it

        }
        params[argc+1] = NULL;          //list must be null terminated

        pid3 = fork();
        if(0 == pid3){
            execv("./prog", params);
            exit(-1);
        }   //no waitpid here, because we'd like this process to continue on its own

        params[argc+1] = "";            //avoid invalid free
        free(params);

When I run this code normally, I get the following error:

*** Error in `./prog': free(): invalid next size (fast): 0x0000000001ac3830 ***

Valgrind tells me this:

==28067== Memcheck, a memory error detector
==28067== Copyright (C) 2002-2015, and GNU GPL'd, by Julian Seward et al.
==28067== Using Valgrind-3.11.0 and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info
==28067== Command: ./prog ./photos/photo1.jpg
==28067== 
=====Displaying photo 0 (be patient.. XQuartz sucks)
Enter degrees to rotate image(0,90,180,270): 90
Enter a caption > thumb
==28067== Invalid write of size 8
==28067==    at 0x400C58: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067==  Address 0x51fa8d0 is 16 bytes inside a block of size 18 alloc'd
==28067==    at 0x4C2BBAD: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:299)
==28067==    by 0x400C05: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067== 
==28067== Invalid write of size 8
==28067==    at 0x400CC3: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067==  Address 0x51fa8d8 is 6 bytes after a block of size 18 alloc'd
==28067==    at 0x4C2BBAD: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:299)
==28067==    by 0x400C05: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067== 
==28067== Invalid write of size 8
==28067==    at 0x400D0E: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067==  Address 0x51fa8d8 is 6 bytes after a block of size 18 alloc'd
==28067==    at 0x4C2BBAD: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:299)
==28067==    by 0x400C05: main (in /usr/prog)
==28067== 
==28071== Syscall param execve(argv) points to unaddressable byte(s)
==28071==    at 0x4F00CF7: execve (in /usr/lib64/libc-2.23.so)
==28071==    by 0x400CE8: main (in /usr/prog)
==28071==  Address 0x51fa8d2 is 0 bytes after a block of size 18 alloc'd
==28071==    at 0x4C2BBAD: malloc (vg_replace_malloc.c:299)
==28071==    by 0x400C05: main (in /usr/prog)
==28071== 
==28067== 
==28067== HEAP SUMMARY:
==28067==     in use at exit: 0 bytes in 0 blocks
==28067==   total heap usage: 5 allocs, 5 frees, 1,051,194 bytes allocated
==28067== 
==28067== All heap blocks were freed -- no leaks are possible
==28067== 
==28067== For counts of detected and suppressed errors, rerun with: -v
==28067== ERROR SUMMARY: 3 errors from 3 contexts (suppressed: 0 from 0)

Interestingly, if I comment out the 'free(params)' line, then I get a segmentation fault, occurring on the line before it, 'params[argc+1] = "";' . Why is could that be?

davlet davlet · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-22T02:48:59

char **params = malloc(sizeof(char*) * argc + 2 );

Should be

char **params = malloc(sizeof(char*) * (argc + 2) );

c: set malloc'd array element to NULL (invalid write)

1 Answers