Re: kobject ->k_name memory leak

[Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2007 at 12:09:59AM +0300, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 12:47:16PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 12:26:07PM +0300, Alexey Dobriyan wrote:
> > > Hi, Greg!
> > > 
> > > Commit ce2c9cb0259acd2aed184499ebe41ab00da13b25 aka
> > > "kobject: remove the static array for the name" introduced memory leak
> > > of a module name after modprobe/rmmod. Apparently for modules ->release
> > > callback is NULL.
> > > 
> > > kobject_cleanup: ->release = 00000000, name = 'foo_sysctl'
> > > Pid: 1927, comm: rmmod Not tainted 2.6.24-rc3-e1cca7e8d484390169777b423a7fe46c7021fec1 #5
> > >  [<c10d4a58>] kobject_cleanup+0xb8/0xc0
> > >  [<c10d4a60>] kobject_release+0x0/0x10
> > >  [<c10d587b>] kref_put+0x2b/0xa0
> > >  [<c11dbe85>] _spin_unlock+0x25/0x40
> > >  [<c1045b78>] free_module+0x78/0xd0
> > >  [<c104773f>] sys_delete_module+0x12f/0x1a0
> > 
> > Hm, _which_ kobject associated with a module, there are 3 of them I
> > think :)
> 
> Ouch!
> 
> > They should all have a release function, and if they do not, we think
> > it's a "static" kobject and it is not safe to free that name.
> > 
> > I've been working on cleaning this up a lot in the -mm tree with over 80
> > patches for the kset/kobject apis and interfaces.
> > 
> > But if we have a dynamic kobject, and we aren't freeing it properly,
> > please let me know which one it is and I'll work to fix it for 2.6.24.
> 
> The one which is passed to kobject_set_name() in mod_sysfs_init()..

That one should be set to the module_ktype, which is in kernel/params.c,
so the release function there should... oh crap, there is no release
function.  That's a bug.  After I get out of meetings tonight I'll write
up a patch for that, unless someone beats me to it :)

thanks,

greg k-h