kref refcounting breakage in mainline

From: Andrew Morton
Date: Fri Mar 02 2007 - 04:02:11 EST



-mm has a debugging patch which warns when atomic_dec_and_test() takes an
atomic_t negative
(ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.20/2.6.20-mm2/broken-out/detect-atomic-counter-underflows.patch).


When it is applied to current mainline, a simple `rmmod ipw2200' gives:

[ 75.825072] BUG: atomic counter underflow at:
[ 75.825180] [<c01c6eb4>] kref_put+0x66/0x82
[ 75.825278] [<c022e4d4>] bus_remove_driver+0x66/0x75
[ 75.825383] [<c022ee2c>] driver_unregister+0x8/0x13
[ 75.825484] [<c01d7add>] pci_unregister_driver+0xc/0x45
[ 75.825593] [<c0132147>] sys_delete_module+0x157/0x17c
[ 75.825703] [<c013c663>] audit_syscall_entry+0x10d/0x137
[ 75.825818] [<c0103b14>] syscall_call+0x7/0xb
[ 75.825913] [<c02d0000>] xfrm4_dst_destroy+0xe/0xd5

This didn't happen in 2.6.20-mm2, so this bug was introduced by a patch
which was not in the -mm lineup twelve days ago.

Presumably the effect of this is a memory leak or a use-after-free.
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