From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Julia Lawall Subject: question about drivers/isdn/hisax/st5481_init.c Date: Fri, 13 May 2011 07:53:43 +0200 (CEST) Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII To: Karsten Keil , netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org The function probe_st5481 allocates an adapter value using kzalloc, adds it to adapter_list, and then performs various initialization operations, which may fail. adapter_list is a static variable that is never otherwise referenced in the file. There is a list_del that removes the adapter from the list in the function disconnect_st5481. The presence of the adapter on the list makes it possibly unsafe to free adapter in the failure cases. Could the list just be removed, if it is not being used anywhere? Or if the list should be kept because it is useful or it is planned to be useful in the future, could the insertion into the list be moved to the end of the function, after the potentially failing operations, so that adapter can be freed when a failure occurs? julia