On 3/5/20 6:48 AM, vjitta@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > On 2020-02-27 22:23, Vlastimil Babka wrote: >> >> This is even more nasty as it doesn't seem to require that no objects >> exist. >> Also there is no synchronization against concurrent allocations/frees? >> Gasp. > > Since, random sequence cache is only used to update the freelist in > shuffle_freelist > which is done only when a new slab is created incase if objects > allocations are > done without a need of new slab creation they will use the existing > freelist which > should be fine as object size doesn't change after order_store() and > incase if a new > slab is created we will get the updated freelist. so in both cases i > think it should > be fine. I have some doubts. With reinit_cache_random_seq() for SLUB, s->random_seq will in turn: cache_random_seq_destroy() - point to an object that's been kfree'd - point to NULL init_cache_random_seq() cache_random_seq_create() - point to freshly allocated zeroed out object freelist_randomize() - the object is gradually initialized - the indices are gradually transformed to page offsets At any point of this, new slab can be allocated in parallel and observe s->random_seq in shuffle_freelist(), and it's only ok if it's currently NULL. Could it be fixed? In the reinit part you would need to - atomically update a valid s->random_seq to another valid s->random_seq (perhaps with NULL in between which means some freelist won't be perhaps randomized) - write barrier - call calculate_sizes() with updated flags / new order, make sure all the fields of s-> are updated in a safe order and with write barries (i.e. update s->oo and s->flags would be probably last, but maybe that's not all) so that anyone allocating a new slab will always get something valid (maybe that path would need also new read barriers?) No, I don't think it's worth the trouble?