My hunch about the length of struct aliases was correct; when a parameter that is longer than the *entire* aliases struct element (146 characters) is compared the call to memcmp() is redirected to "include/linux/fortify-string.h" [0] where checks are done to ensure there are no out-of-bounds reads.
Because the 'buf' parameter is 146 characters long the call looks like: memcmp("param146=...", aliases[i].alias, len + 1) where 'len' is 146 and so 147 gets passed in. That triggers: if (p_size < size || q_size < size) fortify_panic(__func__); because 'size' (from 'len + 1') is 147 and q_size is 146 ( size_t q_size = __struct_size(q) ) ('p' is `buf`, 'q' is 'aliases[i].alias' ) So, with a guard case to avoid calling memcmp() at all unless the lengths match it works. I'll send the patch to the v6.8 stable tree upstream. $ qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt,gic-version=3 -cpu max,pauth-impdef=on -smp 2 -m 4096 -nographic -kernel /srv/NAS/Sunny/SourceCode/builds/linux-aarch64/arch/arm64/boot/Image -append "debug param146=ni4ohneo0oothieyeef9vo4ieth4yeiz6ohsiemae6aoy2asu9xei5eethoh0igaitha7laeghoot haeph9xai7kier3aib7aejaengahghan2zojeebai3kad9meesh6eichaey2" [ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x000f0510] [ 0.000000] Linux version 6.8.12 (li...@iam.tj) (aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc (Debian 12.2.0-14) 12.2.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.40) #10 SMP Fri Jul 26 13:57:53 BST 2024 [ 0.000000] random: crng init done [ 0.000000] Machine model: linux,dummy-virt ... [ 0.000000] Kernel command line: debug param146=ni4ohneo0oothieyeef9vo4ieth4yeiz6ohsiemae6aoy2asu9xei5eethoh0igaitha7laeghoothaeph9xai7kier3aib7aejae ngahghan2zojeebai3kad9meesh6eichaey2 [ 0.000000] Unknown kernel command line parameters "param146=ni4ohneo0oothieyeef9vo4ieth4yeiz6ohsiemae6aoy2asu9xei5eethoh0igaitha7laeghoothaeph9xai7k ier3aib7aejaengahghan2zojeebai3kad9meesh6eichaey2", will be passed to user space. [0] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/include/linux/fortify-string.h?h=v6.8#n659 -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2069534 Title: linux 6.8 fails to boot on arm64 if any param is more than 140 chars To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/2069534/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs