Re: [PATCH] ext4: fix memory leak in ext4_fill_super

[Theodore Ts'o]

On Thu, Apr 29, 2021 at 11:09:56PM +0300, Pavel Skripkin wrote:
> > we will exit with -ENOMEM.  So at the very least all callers of
> > kthread_stop() also need to check for -ENOMEM as well as -EINTR ---
> > or, be somehow sure that the thread function was successfully called
> > and started.  In this particular case, the ext4 mount code had just
> > started the kmmpd thread, and then detected that something else had
> > gone wrong, and failed the mount before the kmmpd thread ever had a
> > chance to run.
> 
> There is a small problem about -ENOMEM...

What I'd suggest is that we simply move

> exit_thread:
> 	EXT4_SB(sb)->s_mmp_tsk = NULL;
> 	kfree(data);
> 	brelse(bh);
> 	return retval;
> }

out of the thread function.  That means hanging struct mmpd_data off
the struct ext4_sb_info structure, and then adding a function like
this to fs/ext4/mmp.c

static void ext4_stop_mmpd(struct ext4_sb_info *sbi)
{
	if (sbi->s_mmp_tsk) {
		kthread_stop(sbi->s_mmp_tsk);
		brelse(sbi->s_mmp_data->bh);
		kfree(sbi->s_mmp_data);
		sbi->s_mmp_data = NULL;
		sbi->s_mmp_tsk = NULL;
	}
}

Basically, just move all of the cleanup so it is done after the
kthread is stopped, so we don't have to do any fancy error checking.
We just do it unconditionally.

					- Ted

P.S.  Actually, we could drop the struct mmpd_data altogether, and
just hang the buffer head as sbi->s_mmp_bh.  Then we can just pass the
struct super * as the private pointer to kmmpd().