Re: [PATCH v2 1/4] mm/mempolicy: Fix memory leaks in mempolicy_sysfs_init()

[Gregory Price <gourry@gourry.net>]

On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 03:31:38PM +0900, Rakie Kim wrote:
> > Is this correct? If kobject_init_and_add fails, from other examples we
> > need only free the mempolicy_kobj - because it failed to initialize and
> > therefore should not have any references.  I think this causes an
> > underflow.
> 
> Regarding the reordering of mempolicy_kobj allocation:
> 1) In kobject_init_and_add(), kobject_init() is always called, which

Quite right, mea culpa.

> 
> 2) The release function for mempolicy_kobj is responsible for freeing
>    associated memory:
> 
>    static void mempolicy_kobj_release(struct kobject *kobj)
>    {
>        ...
>        kfree(ngrp->nattrs);
>        kfree(ngrp);
>        kfree(kobj);
>    }
> 

I see what you're trying to do now after looking at the free-ordering
at little closer.

Lets do the following:

1) allocate node_attrs and mempolicy_kobj up front and keep your
   reordering, this lets us clean up allocations on failure before
   kobject_init is called

2) after this remove all the other code and just let
   mempolicy_kobj_release clean up node_attrs

3) Add a (%d) to the error message to differentiate failures

This is a little bit cleaner and is a bit less code. (Not built or
tested, just a recommendation).

I'd recommend submitting this patch by itself to mm-stable, since the
remainder of the patch line changes functionality and this fixes a bug
in LTS kernels.

~Gregory

---


diff --git a/mm/mempolicy.c b/mm/mempolicy.c
index 530e71fe9147..05a410db08b4 100644
--- a/mm/mempolicy.c
+++ b/mm/mempolicy.c
@@ -3541,38 +3541,34 @@ static int __init mempolicy_sysfs_init(void)
 	int err;
 	static struct kobject *mempolicy_kobj;

-	mempolicy_kobj = kzalloc(sizeof(*mempolicy_kobj), GFP_KERNEL);
-	if (!mempolicy_kobj) {
+	node_attrs = kcalloc(nr_node_ids, sizeof(struct iw_node_attr *),
+			     GFP_KERNEL);
+	if (!node_attrs) {
 		err = -ENOMEM;
 		goto err_out;
 	}

-	node_attrs = kcalloc(nr_node_ids, sizeof(struct iw_node_attr *),
-			     GFP_KERNEL);
-	if (!node_attrs) {
+	mempolicy_kobj = kzalloc(sizeof(*mempolicy_kobj), GFP_KERNEL);
+	if (!mempolicy_kobj) {
 		err = -ENOMEM;
-		goto mempol_out;
+		kfree(node_attrs);
+		goto err_out;
 	}

 	err = kobject_init_and_add(mempolicy_kobj, &mempolicy_ktype, mm_kobj,
 				   "mempolicy");
 	if (err)
-		goto node_out;
+		goto mempol_out;

 	err = add_weighted_interleave_group(mempolicy_kobj);
-	if (err) {
-		pr_err("mempolicy sysfs structure failed to initialize\n");
-		kobject_put(mempolicy_kobj);
-		return err;
-	}
+	if (err)
+		goto mempol_out;

-	return err;
-node_out:
-	kfree(node_attrs);
+	return 0;
 mempol_out:
-	kfree(mempolicy_kobj);
+	kobject_put(mempolicy_kobj);
 err_out:
-	pr_err("failed to add mempolicy kobject to the system\n");
+	pr_err("mempolicy sysfs structure failed to initialize (%d)\n", err);
 	return err;
 }