Nikolai started to use shadow variables and found that list_head is not initialized correctly using the existing API. The problem is that LIST_HEAD_INIT() set pointers to itself. klp_shadow_alloc() then copies these pointers to another location. It would be possible to solve this by a late initialization. But this does not work well with klp_shadow_get_or_alloc(). Also this behavior is error prone. Note that list_head might be hidden in another structure, for example mutex. I suggest to change the API and allow to initialize the shadow variables using a custom callback. I think that we have already talked about this but we decided to go the easier way. It seems that it was a bad decision. I send also patch that add a symmetric callback to the klp_shadow_free() functions. It might be handy especially for klp_shadow_free_all(). The patchset is against the current Linus' tree. Petr Mladek (2): livepatch: Initialize shadow variables by init function safely livepatch: Allow to unregister or free shadow data using a custom function Documentation/livepatch/shadow-vars.txt | 42 ++++++++++++----- include/linux/livepatch.h | 23 +++++++--- kernel/livepatch/shadow.c | 75 +++++++++++++++++++++---------- samples/livepatch/livepatch-shadow-fix1.c | 44 +++++++++++++----- samples/livepatch/livepatch-shadow-fix2.c | 33 +++++++------- 5 files changed, 150 insertions(+), 67 deletions(-) -- 2.13.6 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe live-patching" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html