On Sun, 15 Jan 2012, Eric Dumazet wrote: > As soon as the slub_lock is released, another thread can come and find > the new kmem_cache. Slabs are not looked up by name. A pointer to kmem_cache is passed to slab functions and that pointer is returned from kmem_cache_create(). The risk is someone traversing the kmem_cach list which is only done from within slub. Subject: slub: Do not hold slub_lock when calling sysfs_slab_add() sysfs_slab_add() calls various sysfs functions that actually may end up in userspace doing all sorts of things. Release the slub_lock after adding the kmem_cache structure to the list. At that point the address of the kmem_cache is not known so we are guaranteed exlusive access to the following modifications to the kmem_cache structure. If the sysfs_slab_add fails then reacquire the slub_lock to remove the kmem_cache structure from the list. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx> --- mm/slub.c | 4 +++- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) Index: linux-2.6/mm/slub.c =================================================================== --- linux-2.6.orig/mm/slub.c 2012-01-17 03:07:11.140010438 -0600 +++ linux-2.6/mm/slub.c 2012-01-17 03:07:19.532010264 -0600 @@ -3929,13 +3929,15 @@ struct kmem_cache *kmem_cache_create(con if (kmem_cache_open(s, n, size, align, flags, ctor)) { list_add(&s->list, &slab_caches); + up_write(&slub_lock); if (sysfs_slab_add(s)) { + down_write(&slub_lock); list_del(&s->list); + up_write(&slub_lock); kfree(n); kfree(s); goto err; } - up_write(&slub_lock); return s; } kfree(n); -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html