[LTP] [PATCH] perf_event_open03: Track SUnreclaim growth instead of MemAvailable

[LTP] [PATCH] perf_event_open03: Track SUnreclaim growth instead of MemAvailable

[Tang Yizhou via ltp]

From: Tang Yizhou <yizhou.tang@shopee.com>

CVE-2020-25704 leaks a small kmalloc() allocation (the filter's file
name string) on every failed PERF_EVENT_IOC_SET_FILTER call. The test
detected this by watching MemAvailable in /proc/meminfo drop by more
than 100MB over 12M iterations.

MemAvailable is a global, system-wide estimate. It is heavily influenced
by other memory activities of unrelated processes. This produces
intermittent false positives: the test passes when run alone but
occasionally fails when run with other tasks.

An improvement is to track the growth of SUnreclaim instead. It is less
sensitive to other kinds of memory activities.

Also note in the failure output that unreclaimable slab can still grow
due to unrelated slab activities, so a failure should be confirmed on an
idle system or with kmemleak before being treated as a regression.

Signed-off-by: Tang Yizhou <yizhou.tang@shopee.com>
---
 .../perf_event_open/perf_event_open03.c       | 32 ++++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/testcases/kernel/syscalls/perf_event_open/perf_event_open03.c b/testcases/kernel/syscalls/perf_event_open/perf_event_open03.c
index 389cc3511..0cc1c27f0 100644
--- a/testcases/kernel/syscalls/perf_event_open/perf_event_open03.c
+++ b/testcases/kernel/syscalls/perf_event_open/perf_event_open03.c
@@ -77,13 +77,13 @@ static void check_progress(int i)
 
 static void run(void)
 {
-	long diff, diff_total, mem_avail, mem_avail_prev;
+	long diff, diff_total, slab, slab_prev;
 	int i, sample;
 
 	sample = 0;
 	diff_total = 0;
 
-	mem_avail_prev = SAFE_READ_MEMINFO("MemAvailable:");
+	slab_prev = SAFE_READ_MEMINFO("SUnreclaim:");
 	tst_timer_start(CLOCK_MONOTONIC);
 
 	/* leak about 100MB of RAM */
@@ -92,28 +92,36 @@ static void run(void)
 		check_progress(i);
 
 		/*
-		 * Every 1200000 iterations, calculate the difference in memory
-		 * availability. If the difference is greater than 20 * 1024 (20MB),
-		 * increment the sample counter and log the event.
+		 * Every 1200000 iterations, calculate how much the unreclaimable
+		 * slab has grown. If the increase is greater than 20 * 1024
+		 * (20MB), increment the sample counter and log the event.
 		 */
 		if ((i % 1200000) == 0) {
-			mem_avail = SAFE_READ_MEMINFO("MemAvailable:");
-			diff = mem_avail_prev - mem_avail;
+			slab = SAFE_READ_MEMINFO("SUnreclaim:");
+			diff = slab - slab_prev;
 			diff_total += diff;
 
 			if (diff > 20 * 1024) {
 				sample++;
-				tst_res(TINFO, "MemAvailable decreased by %ld kB at iteration %d", diff, i);
+				tst_res(TINFO, "SUnreclaim increased by %ld kB at iteration %d", diff, i);
 			}
 
-			mem_avail_prev = mem_avail;
+			slab_prev = slab;
 		}
 	}
 
-	if ((sample > 5) || (diff_total > 100 * 1024))
-		tst_res(TFAIL, "Likely kernel memory leak detected, total decrease: %ld kB", diff_total);
-	else
+	if ((sample > 5) || (diff_total > 100 * 1024)) {
+		tst_res(TFAIL,
+			"Likely kernel memory leak detected, SUnreclaim increased by %ld kB total",
+			diff_total);
+		tst_res(TINFO,
+			"Unreclaimable slab can also grow due to memory activity from "
+			"any other unrelated process. If this test fails, re-run it on "
+			"an otherwise idle system and/or confirm with kmemleak "
+			"(CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK) before treating it as a real regression.");
+	} else {
 		tst_res(TPASS, "No memory leak found");
+	}
 }
 
 static void cleanup(void)
-- 
2.39.5 (Apple Git-154)


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Re: [LTP] perf_event_open03: Track SUnreclaim growth instead of MemAvailable

[linuxtestproject.agent]

Hi Tang,

On Tue, 14 Jul 2026 19:13:07 +0800, Tang Yizhou wrote:
> perf_event_open03: Track SUnreclaim growth instead of MemAvailable

Verdict - Reviewed

---
Note:

The agent can sometimes produce false positives although often its
findings are genuine. If you find issues with the review, please
comment this email or ignore the suggestions.

Regards,
LTP AI Reviewer

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