Re: Serial buffer memory leak

From: Paul Fulghum
Date: Wed Aug 08 2007 - 09:15:36 EST


Laurent Pinchart wrote:
Patch c5c34d4862e18ef07c1276d233507f540fb5a532 (tty: flush flip buffer on ldisc input queue flush) introduces a race condition which can lead to memory leaks.

The problem can be triggered when tcflush() is called when data are being pushed to the line discipline driver by flush_to_ldisc().

flush_to_ldisc() releases tty->buf.lock when calling the line discipline receive_buf function. At that poing tty_buffer_flush() kicks in and sets both tty->buf.head and tty->buf.tail to NULL. When flush_to_ldisc() finishes, it restores tty->buf.head but doesn't touch tty->buf.tail. This corrups the buffer queue, and the next call to tty_buffer_request_room() will allocate a new buffer and overwrite tty->buf.head. The previous buffer is then lost forever without being released.

Your description is clear enough, I'll make the patch.

Thanks,
Paul
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