From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Ben Hutchings To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org CC: akpm@linux-foundation.org, "Michael S. Tsirkin" Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 01:46:53 +0000 Message-ID: Subject: [PATCH 3.2 084/152] virtio_pci: document why we defer kfree In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: 3.2.67-rc1 review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: "Michael S. Tsirkin" commit a1eb03f546d651a8f39c7d0692b1f7f5b4e7e3cd upstream. The reason we defer kfree until release function is because it's a general rule for kobjects: kfree of the reference counter itself is only legal in the release function. Previous patch didn't make this clear, document this in code. Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin [bwh: Backported to 3.2: adjust filename] Signed-off-by: Ben Hutchings --- drivers/virtio/virtio_pci.c | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) --- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_pci.c +++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_pci.c @@ -615,6 +615,9 @@ static void virtio_pci_release_dev(struc struct virtio_device *vdev = dev_to_virtio(_d); struct virtio_pci_device *vp_dev = to_vp_device(vdev); + /* As struct device is a kobject, it's not safe to + * free the memory (including the reference counter itself) + * until it's release callback. */ kfree(vp_dev); }