Re: debugfs_create_u32_array() memory leaks

From: Jakub Kicinski
Date: Mon Jun 22 2020 - 15:23:37 EST


On Sat, 20 Jun 2020 09:45:42 +0200 Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 04:17:34PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > I'm trying to use debugfs_create_u32_array() in drivers/net/netdevsim
> > and it causes memory leaks:
> >
> > unreferenced object 0xffff8880546642a0 (size 16):
> > comm "test_udp_tuns.s", pid 2146, jiffies 4294928368 (age 3772.435s)
> > hex dump (first 16 bytes):
> > 84 52 6a 4d 80 88 ff ff 04 00 00 00 f3 78 7e 89 .RjM.........x~.
> > backtrace:
> > [<000000006962a447>] debugfs_create_u32_array+0x3f/0x90
> >
> > I can see that debugfs_create_u32_array() allocates a structure at
> > create time that ends up assigned to inode->i_private, but I don't
> > see it freed anywhere.
> >
> > Am I missing something? I'm pretty sure files get removed, cause the
> > driver calls debugfs_remove_recursive() and no other file types leaks.
>
> Yeah, that's a bug, nice catch. The debugfs_create*() functions should
> not allocate local memory as we can't know to free that memory when the
> file is removed.
>
> Can you fix this up, or do you want me to? I only see one in-kernel
> user of this, so it shouldn't be that tough to do so. The one user
> never removes that file so that's why no one noticed this before.

Ah, I wasn't sure how to fix but since you say that create functions
shouldn't allocate memory seems like the fix will be to make callers
pass an equivalent of struct debugfs_blob_wrapper for u32.

I'm happy to send a patch to that effect - I have a process question
tho - I need this change in net-next, should I sent the patch to you?
Can it still make it into 5.8 (debugfs -> Linus -> net -> net-next) or
perhaps can it go via net-next since there is no de facto bug in 5.8?