[PATCH v2 5/6] slab: validate slab before using it in alloc_single_from_partial()

From: Vlastimil Babka

Date: Mon Sep 15 2025 - 09:55:25 EST


We touch slab->freelist and slab->inuse before checking the slab pointer
is actually sane. Do that validation first, which will be safer. We can
thus also remove the check from alloc_debug_processing().

This adds a new "s->flags & SLAB_CONSISTENCY_CHECKS" test but
alloc_single_from_partial() is only called for caches with debugging
enabled so it's acceptable.

In alloc_single_from_new_slab() we just created the struct slab and call
alloc_debug_processing() to mainly set up redzones, tracking etc, while
not really expecting the consistency checks to fail. Thus don't validate
it there.

Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>
---
mm/slub.c | 20 ++++++++++++--------
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
index 12ad42f3d2e066b02340f2c30a85422583af3c5d..e5b53d1debddd3fe0f941f579a1043a5b976e50b 100644
--- a/mm/slub.c
+++ b/mm/slub.c
@@ -821,6 +821,8 @@ static inline unsigned int get_orig_size(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
return *(unsigned int *)p;
}

+#ifdef CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG
+
/*
* For debugging context when we want to check if the struct slab pointer
* appears to be valid.
@@ -830,7 +832,6 @@ static inline bool validate_slab_ptr(struct slab *slab)
return PageSlab(slab_page(slab));
}

-#ifdef CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG
static unsigned long object_map[BITS_TO_LONGS(MAX_OBJS_PER_PAGE)];
static DEFINE_SPINLOCK(object_map_lock);

@@ -1651,11 +1652,6 @@ static noinline bool alloc_debug_processing(struct kmem_cache *s,
struct slab *slab, void *object, int orig_size)
{
if (s->flags & SLAB_CONSISTENCY_CHECKS) {
- if (!validate_slab_ptr(slab)) {
- slab_err(s, slab, "Not a valid slab page");
- return false;
- }
-
if (!alloc_consistency_checks(s, slab, object))
goto bad;
}
@@ -2825,13 +2821,21 @@ static void *alloc_single_from_partial(struct kmem_cache *s,

lockdep_assert_held(&n->list_lock);

+#ifdef SLUB_DEBUG
+ if (s->flags & SLAB_CONSISTENCY_CHECKS) {
+ if (!validate_slab_ptr(slab)) {
+ slab_err(s, slab, "Not a valid slab page");
+ return NULL;
+ }
+ }
+#endif
+
object = slab->freelist;
slab->freelist = get_freepointer(s, object);
slab->inuse++;

if (!alloc_debug_processing(s, slab, object, orig_size)) {
- if (validate_slab_ptr(slab))
- remove_partial(n, slab);
+ remove_partial(n, slab);
return NULL;
}


--
2.51.0