Re: [PATCH 2/3] slab_common: clear pointers to per memcg caches on destroy

[Vladimir Davydov]

On Thu, Oct 08, 2015 at 02:17:35PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Oct 2015 19:02:40 +0300 Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Currently, we do not clear pointers to per memcg caches in the
> > memcg_params.memcg_caches array when a global cache is destroyed with
> > kmem_cache_destroy. It is fine if the global cache does get destroyed.
> > However, a cache can be left on the list if it still has active objects
> > when kmem_cache_destroy is called (due to a memory leak). If this
> > happens, the entries in the array will point to already freed areas,
> > which is likely to result in data corruption when the cache is reused
> > (via slab merging).
> 
> It's important that we report these leaks so the kernel bug can get
> fixed.  The patch doesn't add such detection and reporting, but it
> could do so?

Reporting individual leaks is up to the slab implementation, we simply
can't do it from the generic code, so we just warn that there is a leak
there. SLUB already dumps addresses of all leaked objects to the log
(see kmem_cache_close -> free_partial -> list_slab_objects).

Thanks,
Vladimir
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/