From: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
To: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>,
Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
workflows@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
kernel-team@meta.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm: kmemleak: raise min_unref_scans to 3 for verbose auto-scan
Date: Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:21:58 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <aq0Ctvzr4V4zjF0k@arm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260917-b4-kmemleak-doc-v1-3-84fde6d1f749@debian.org>
On Thu, Sep 17, 2026 at 06:47:37AM -0700, Breno Leitao wrote:
> CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE sends every report to the console, so a
> transient false positive there is broadcast to whatever collects the
> kernel log rather than sitting in the debugfs file until someone looks.
> That asymmetry justifies being more conservative than the general case.
>
> Require one more consecutive unreferenced scan before reporting. The
> only cost is that a genuine leak is reported one scan interval later
> (600s by default); the value stays writable at run time through the
> module parameter.
>
> Kernels without CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE keep reporting on the
> first unreferenced scan.
>
> I've been running constant upstream kernel with
> CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE set, and I am still seeing some rare false
> positive, that goes away with min_unref_scans=3, so, making it the
> default based on my heuristic.
>
> Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Until someone comes up with a better idea to reduce the false positives,
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-09-18 9:22 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-09-17 13:47 [PATCH 0/3] kmemleak: fix stale documentation and raise the verbose default Breno Leitao
2026-09-17 13:47 ` [PATCH 1/3] Documentation: kmemleak: describe the metadata pool, not the early log Breno Leitao
2026-09-18 9:10 ` Catalin Marinas
2026-09-17 13:47 ` [PATCH 2/3] Documentation: kmemleak: fix stale statements about scanning Breno Leitao
2026-09-18 9:11 ` Catalin Marinas
2026-09-17 13:47 ` [PATCH 3/3] mm: kmemleak: raise min_unref_scans to 3 for verbose auto-scan Breno Leitao
2026-09-17 22:04 ` Andrew Morton
2026-09-18 9:21 ` Catalin Marinas
2026-09-18 10:20 ` Breno Leitao
2026-09-18 9:21 ` Catalin Marinas [this message]
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=aq0Ctvzr4V4zjF0k@arm.com \
--to=catalin.marinas@arm.com \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=corbet@lwn.net \
--cc=kernel-team@meta.com \
--cc=leitao@debian.org \
--cc=linux-doc@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-mm@kvack.org \
--cc=rdunlap@infradead.org \
--cc=skhan@linuxfoundation.org \
--cc=workflows@vger.kernel.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is an external index of several public inboxes,
see mirroring instructions on how to clone and mirror
all data and code used by this external index.