Re: [PATCH 2/2] ARM: dma-mapping: fix alloc/free for coherent + CMA + gfp=0

From: Russell King - ARM Linux
Date: Fri Feb 19 2016 - 09:06:23 EST


On Fri, Feb 19, 2016 at 09:12:04AM +0100, Rabin Vincent wrote:
> Given a device which uses arm_coherent_dma_ops and on which
> dev_get_cma_area(dev) returns non-NULL, the following usage of the DMA
> API with gfp=0 results in a memory leak and memory corruption.
>
> p = dma_alloc_coherent(dev, sz, &dma, 0);
> if (p)
> dma_free_coherent(dev, sz, p, dma);
>
> The memory leak is because the alloc allocates using
> __alloc_simple_buffer() but the free attempts
> dma_release_from_contiguous(), which does not do free anything since the
> page is not in the CMA area.

I'd really like to see a better solution to this problem: over the course
of the years, I've seen a number of patches that rearrange the test order
at allocation time because of some problem or the other.

What we need is a better way to ensure that we use the correct release
functionality - having two independent set of tests where the order
matters is really not very good.

Maybe someone can put some thought into this...

--
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