From: Heikki Krogerus <heikki.krogerus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Previously, kobjects were released before the associated kobj_types; this can cause a kobject deallocation to fail when the kobject has children; an example of this is in software_node_unregister_nodes(); it calls release on the parent before children meaning that children can be released after the parent, which may be needed for removal. So, take a reference to the parent before we delete a node to ensure that the parent is not released before the children. Reported-by: Naresh Kamboju <naresh.kamboju@xxxxxxxxxx> Fixes: 7589238a8cf3 ("Revert "software node: Simplify software_node_release() function"") Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-kselftest/CAFd5g44s5NQvT8TG_x4rwbqoa7zWzkV0TX+ETZoQdOB7OwXCPQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/T/#m71f37f3985f2abd7209c8ca8e0fa4edc45e171d6 Co-developed-by: Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Brendan Higgins <brendanhiggins@xxxxxxxxxx> --- This patch is based on the diff written by Heikki linked above. Heikki, can you either reply with a Signed-off-by? Otherwise, I can resend with me as the author and I will list you as the Co-developed-by. Sorry for all the CCs: I just want to make sure everyone who was a party to the original bug sees this. --- lib/kobject.c | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) diff --git a/lib/kobject.c b/lib/kobject.c index 83198cb37d8d..5921e2470b46 100644 --- a/lib/kobject.c +++ b/lib/kobject.c @@ -663,6 +663,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(kobject_get_unless_zero); */ static void kobject_cleanup(struct kobject *kobj) { + struct kobject *parent = kobj->parent; struct kobj_type *t = get_ktype(kobj); const char *name = kobj->name; @@ -680,6 +681,9 @@ static void kobject_cleanup(struct kobject *kobj) kobject_uevent(kobj, KOBJ_REMOVE); } + /* make sure the parent is not released before the (last) child */ + kobject_get(parent); + /* remove from sysfs if the caller did not do it */ if (kobj->state_in_sysfs) { pr_debug("kobject: '%s' (%p): auto cleanup kobject_del\n", @@ -693,6 +697,8 @@ static void kobject_cleanup(struct kobject *kobj) t->release(kobj); } + kobject_put(parent); + /* free name if we allocated it */ if (name) { pr_debug("kobject: '%s': free name\n", name); base-commit: 8632e9b5645bbc2331d21d892b0d6961c1a08429 -- 2.26.0.110.g2183baf09c-goog