On Monday 23 December 2013 10:37:21 Alex Williamson wrote: > On Mon, 2013-12-23 at 16:49 +0100, Peter Wu wrote: [..] > > > > There is still one thing I do not fully understand, how should > > dev_set_drvdata and dev_get_drvdata be used? For the devices passed > > to probe functions, the core takes care of setting to NULL on error. > > Then device_unregister frees the memory, right? > > > > Now, what if the dev_set_drvdata (or aliases such as pci_set_drvdata, > > i2c_set_adapinfo, etc.) are manually called outside probe functions? > > Or inside the probe function, but not for the device that is being > > probed (such as is the case with the i801 i2c driver)? > > > > The VFIO driver also does something odd, it clears the driver data, > > but the device holding it is freed using kfree(): > > > > static void vfio_device_release(struct kref *kref) { > > struct vfio_device *device = container_of(kref, > > struct vfio_device, kref); > > struct vfio_group *group = device->group; > > > > list_del(&device->group_next); > > mutex_unlock(&group->device_lock); > > > > dev_set_drvdata(device->dev, NULL); > > > > kfree(device); > > > > Is a memory leak also present here since dev_set_drvdata() always tries to > > allocate memory? > > But it doesn't: > > int dev_set_drvdata(struct device *dev, void *data) > { > int error; > > if (!dev->p) { > error = device_private_init(dev); > if (error) > return error; > } > dev->p->driver_data = data; > return 0; > } It does: int device_private_init(struct device *dev) { dev->p = kzalloc(sizeof(*dev->p), GFP_KERNEL); if (!dev->p) return -ENOMEM; dev->p->device = dev; klist_init(&dev->p->klist_children, klist_children_get, klist_children_put); INIT_LIST_HEAD(&dev->p->deferred_probe); return 0; } and if it doesn't, then I must be missing something in this non-obvious code. I scanned the interwebs and Documentation/, but could not really find a great example on how this is supposed to work. The dev_set_drvdata function existed since Linus moved to git. > Also, the code referenced is kfree'ing a struct vfio_device, not the > struct device. VFIO uses the drvdata to provide a back pointer to the > vfio specific structure, which also includes a pointer to the struct > device. We obviously want to clear drvdata when the vfio specific > structure is being released. Ah, I see. "device->dev" is not freed, but "device". And the data is cleared for "device->dev". Thanks for correcting. Clear examples of how to use dev_{s,g}et_drvdata correctly in i2c is still wanted. I stepped in it yesterday, i2c seems to have its own way to register new devices. More specifically, how can the memory associated with dev_set_drvdata be free'd on error paths if the device is not registered with device_register (as is done in the probe function of the i801 i2c driver)? Regards, Peter -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-i2c" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html