Re: [PATCH v5 02/13] ima: Replace static htable queue with dynamically allocated array

[Mimi Zohar <zohar@linux.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 2026-04-29 at 18:03 +0200, Roberto Sassu wrote:
> From: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>
> 
> The IMA hash table is a fixed-size array of hlist_head buckets:
> 
>     struct hlist_head ima_htable[IMA_MEASURE_HTABLE_SIZE];
> 
> IMA_MEASURE_HTABLE_SIZE is (1 << IMA_HASH_BITS) = 1024 buckets, each a
> struct hlist_head (one pointer, 8 bytes on 64-bit). That is 8 KiB allocated
> in BSS for every kernel, regardless of whether IMA is ever used, and
> regardless of how many measurements are actually made.
> 
> Replace the fixed-size array with a RCU-protected pointer to a dynamically
> allocated array that is initialized in ima_init_htable(), which is called
> from ima_init() during early boot. ima_init_htable() calls the static
> function ima_alloc_replace_htable() which, other than initializing the hash
> table the first time, can also hot-swap the existing hash table with a
> blank one.
> 
> The allocation in ima_alloc_replace_htable() uses kcalloc() so the buckets
> are zero-initialised (equivalent to HLIST_HEAD_INIT { .first = NULL }).
> Callers of ima_alloc_replace_htable() must call synchronize_rcu() and free
> the returned hash table.
> 
> Finally, access the hash table with rcu_dereference() in
> ima_lookup_digest_entry() (reader side) and with
> rcu_dereference_protected() in ima_add_digest_entry() (writer side).
> 
> No functional change: bucket count, hash function, and all locking remain
> identical.
> 
> Link: https://github.com/linux-integrity/linux/issues/1
> Signed-off-by: Roberto Sassu <roberto.sassu@huawei.com>

Reviewed-by: Mimi Zohar <zohar@linux.ibm.com>