On (06/09/15 20:11), Christoph Lameter wrote: > On Tue, 9 Jun 2015, Andrew Morton wrote: > > > Well I like it, even though it's going to cause a zillion little cleanup > > patches. > > > > checkpatch already has a "kfree(NULL) is safe and this check is > > probably not required" test so I guess Joe will need to get busy ;) > > > > I'll park these patches until after 4.1 is released - it's getting to > > that time... > > Why do this at all? this makes things less fragile. > I understand that kfree/kmem_cache_free can take a > null pointer but this is the destruction of a cache and it usually > requires multiple actions to clean things up and these actions have to be > properly sequenced. All other processors have to stop referencing this > cache before it can be destroyed. >I think failing well, it's not just `failing', it's a NULL pointer deref. > if someone does something strange like doing cache destruction with a > NULL pointer is valuable. > a missing check is not `something strange'. it's just happening. (a very quick google search) http://help.lockergnome.com/linux/PATCH-dlm-NULL-dereference-failure-kmem_cache_create--ftopict555436.html http://linux-kernel.2935.n7.nabble.com/PATCH-2-6-30-rc6-Remove-kmem-cache-destroy-in-s3c24xx-dma-init-td460417.html etc. -ss -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx";> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>