On 10/24/2013 12:13 PM, Jonathan Cameron wrote: > On 10/23/13 18:44, Lars-Peter Clausen wrote: >> The code is actually fine as it is. The iio_kfifo_free() function drops a reference, but does not free the buffer's memory if somebody else is still holding a reference. >> >> - Lars > I'm guessing this came from a crash though.... Sebastian, what motivated the patch? tiadc_iio_buffered_hardware_remove() in staging-next looks like this: static void tiadc_iio_buffered_hardware_remove(struct iio_dev *indio_dev) { struct tiadc_device *adc_dev = iio_priv(indio_dev); free_irq(adc_dev->mfd_tscadc->irq, indio_dev); iio_kfifo_free(indio_dev->buffer); iio_buffer_unregister(indio_dev); } and is called rmmod time. iio_kfifo_free() cleans up the buffer (there is not a second reference so the memory is gone. iio_buffer_unregister() crashes later because void iio_buffer_unregister(struct iio_dev *indio_dev) { kfree(indio_dev->buffer->scan_mask); kfree(indio_dev->buffer->scan_el_group.attrs); iio_free_chan_devattr_list(&indio_dev->buffer->scan_el_dev_attr_list); } the first kree() is looking at ->buffer which is gone by now. So at first I changed switched the order of the two (iio_kfifi_free() and iio_buffer_unregister()) and I had a crash later because iio_core removes the buffer as well. So I dropped the iio_kfifo_free() call since it seems to be already done. Sebastian -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-iio" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html