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From: Dave Hansen <dave@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
To: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Ben Blum <bblum@google.com>
Subject: Re: [patch 3/4 -mm] flex_array: poison free elements
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:16:58 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1251148618.22398.8188.camel@nimitz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.00.0908241330361.5574@chino.kir.corp.google.com>

On Mon, 2009-08-24 at 13:41 -0700, David Rientjes wrote:
> LEX_ARRAY_FREE (or an additional poison value to 
> distinguish between use-uninitialized vs. use-after-free) must be used in 
> flex_array_clear() otherwise the cgroup patchset, the only proposed user 
> of this library code, could never shrink this array when pid's are free 
> like the kmalloc vs. vmalloc patchset could do.

Are you saying that you expected it to never reallocate the array, but
have a permanent flex_array and that it just calls flex_array_clear() on
the elements that it doesn't want any more, and the array ends up
sparsely populated?  I can see why we'd need a poison value in that
case.

Or, are we just talking about a situation where we need to truncate the
pidlist?

-- Dave


  reply	other threads:[~2009-08-24 21:17 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 30+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2009-08-21 23:21 [patch 1/4 -mm] flex_array: convert element_nr formals to unsigned David Rientjes
2009-08-21 23:21 ` [patch 2/4 -mm] flex_array: add flex_array_clear function David Rientjes
2009-08-24 15:41   ` Dave Hansen
2009-08-24 20:29     ` David Rientjes
2009-08-24 20:38       ` Dave Hansen
2009-08-24 20:50         ` David Rientjes
2009-08-24 21:28           ` Dave Hansen
2009-08-24 22:32             ` David Rientjes
2009-08-21 23:21 ` [patch 3/4 -mm] flex_array: poison free elements David Rientjes
2009-08-24 15:56   ` Dave Hansen
2009-08-24 20:41     ` David Rientjes
2009-08-24 21:16       ` Dave Hansen [this message]
2009-08-24 22:40         ` David Rientjes
2009-08-24 21:42       ` Dave Hansen
2009-08-24 22:44         ` David Rientjes
2009-09-08 22:26           ` David Rientjes
2009-09-09  2:05             ` Li Zefan
2009-09-09  3:18               ` David Rientjes
2009-09-09  3:31                 ` Li Zefan
2009-09-09  3:41                   ` David Rientjes
2009-09-09  3:45                     ` Li Zefan
2009-09-09  4:15                       ` David Rientjes
2009-09-09 15:28             ` Dave Hansen
2009-09-09 19:18               ` David Rientjes
2009-09-09 19:22                 ` Dave Hansen
2009-09-09 19:34                   ` David Rientjes
2009-08-21 23:21 ` [patch 4/4 -mm] flex_array: add flex_array_shrink function David Rientjes
2009-08-21 23:49   ` Andrew Morton
2009-08-22  0:02     ` Randy Dunlap
2009-08-22 21:28     ` David Rientjes

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