This bug was pointed out by Peter Staubach in a recent patch review: Make audit_init() failure path handle situations where audit_panic() action is not AUDIT_FAIL_PANIC. Other uses of audit_sock are not reached unless audit_receive() is properly registered with netlink. Signed-off-by: Amy Griffis <amy.griffis(a)hp.com&gt; diff --git a/kernel/audit.c b/kernel/audit.c index 4eb97b6..c32b864 100644 --- a/kernel/audit.c +++ b/kernel/audit.c @@ -558,8 +558,9 @@ static int __init audit_init(void) THIS_MODULE); if (!audit_sock) audit_panic("cannot initialize netlink socket"); + else + audit_sock->sk_sndtimeo = MAX_SCHEDULE_TIMEOUT; - audit_sock->sk_sndtimeo = MAX_SCHEDULE_TIMEOUT; skb_queue_head_init(&audit_skb_queue); audit_initialized = 1; audit_enabled = audit_default;