On domenica 17 aprile 2022 22:42:00 CEST Jaehee Park wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 17, 2022 at 11:16:38PM +0300, Pavel Skripkin wrote:
> > Hi Jaehee,
> >
> > On 4/17/22 23:14, Jaehee Park wrote:
> > > My understanding of Pavel's response is the free_bss_buf member of
the
> > > pmlmepriv structure wasn't being used anywhere and that the
> > > rtw_free_mlme_riv_ie_data function frees the memory of the pmlmepriv
> > > structure so the second check is redundant.
> > >
> > > However, as Fabio said, the free_bss_buf member is being used and
pbuf
> > > memory is not being freed.
> > > So I'll revert the patch as it was originally (which was just
removing
> > > the {} around the single if statement).
No, Jaehee. This is not what I said :)
> > >
> >
> > Why just `pbuf` allocation can't be removed? This memory is just
unused,
> > isn't it?
What Pavel said is what I said, but using a different argumentation.
> >
> >
> > With regards,
> > Pavel Skripkin
>
>
> The free_bss_buf member is unused.
Correct.
> So it can just be removed right?
No.
> I guess I'm confused by what Pablo is saying about causing a memory
> leak
A memory leak is caused when you allocate some memory and then you lose any
reference to its address so that it cannot be freed. Right?
> by getting rid of the pointer to the memory allocated by pbuf.
No.
> Sorry if I misunderstood.
No problem. Let's rewind...
"pbuf" is assigned with the address of some memory allocated with a call to
vzalloc(). Since "pbuf" is a local variable, you see that the above-
mentioned address is stored in free_bss_buf using the line "pmlmepriv-
>free_bss_buf = pbuf". Is it clear?
Well, you decided to delete the line that calls vfree(pmlmepriv-
>free_bss_buf). At this point you have that memory leak.
Pavel noted that pmlmepriv->free_bss_buf is unused, but it contains the
address of a region of memory that was allocated for no purpose.
Therefore, a correct patch should also remove the allocation that was made
using kzalloc(). If you merely remove the line with vfree() you cause a
memory leak.
Please don't revert your patch. Just fix it with a new version that also
delete the line where "pbuf" is assigned with the value returned by
kzalloc().
I hope that now I've been clearer.
Thanks,
Fabio
> Thanks,
> Jaehee
>
