[PATCH 1/1] signal: Fix memory leak for PIDFD_SELF* sentinels

From: Adrian Huang (Lenovo)
Date: Mon Aug 18 2025 - 09:56:56 EST


Commit f08d0c3a7111 ("pidfd: add PIDFD_SELF* sentinels to refer to own
thread/process") introduced a leak by acquiring a pid reference through
get_task_pid(), which increments pid->count but never drops it with
put_pid().

As a result, kmemleak reports unreferenced pid objects after running
tools/testing/selftests/pidfd/pidfd_test, for example:

unreferenced object 0xff1100206757a940 (size 160):
comm "pidfd_test", pid 16965, jiffies 4294853028
hex dump (first 32 bytes):
01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 fd 57 50 04 .............WP.
5e 44 00 00 00 00 00 00 18 de 34 17 01 00 11 ff ^D........4.....
backtrace (crc cd8844d4):
kmem_cache_alloc_noprof+0x2f4/0x3f0
alloc_pid+0x54/0x3d0
copy_process+0xd58/0x1740
kernel_clone+0x99/0x3b0
__do_sys_clone3+0xbe/0x100
do_syscall_64+0x7b/0x2c0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

Fix this by calling put_pid() after do_pidfd_send_signal() returns.

Fixes: f08d0c3a7111 ("pidfd: add PIDFD_SELF* sentinels to refer to own thread/process")
Signed-off-by: Adrian Huang (Lenovo) <adrianhuang0701@xxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/signal.c | 6 +++++-
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/kernel/signal.c b/kernel/signal.c
index e2c928de7d2c..fe9190d84f28 100644
--- a/kernel/signal.c
+++ b/kernel/signal.c
@@ -4067,6 +4067,7 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE4(pidfd_send_signal, int, pidfd, int, sig,
{
struct pid *pid;
enum pid_type type;
+ int ret;

/* Enforce flags be set to 0 until we add an extension. */
if (flags & ~PIDFD_SEND_SIGNAL_FLAGS)
@@ -4108,7 +4109,10 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE4(pidfd_send_signal, int, pidfd, int, sig,
}
}

- return do_pidfd_send_signal(pid, sig, type, info, flags);
+ ret = do_pidfd_send_signal(pid, sig, type, info, flags);
+ put_pid(pid);
+
+ return ret;
}

static int
--
2.43.0