tree 8b49b2b7ea1f1a9ec31e82a999d7c257978f33ff
parent 2aad1b76e6b0cc5a2e5d9b95a9f356ddddbfa8a9
author Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com> 1238436199 -0400
committer Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> 1238590073 +0200

ring-buffer: do not remove reader page from list on ring buffer free

Impact: prevent possible memory leak

The reader page of the ring buffer is special. Although it points
into the ring buffer, it is not part of the actual buffer. It is
a page used by the reader to swap with a page in the ring buffer.
Once the swap is made, the new reader page is again outside the
buffer.

Even though the reader page points into the buffer, it is really
pointing to residual data. Note, this data is used by the reader.

              reader page
                  |
                  v
       (prev)   +---+    (next)
     +----------|   |----------+
     |          +---+          |
     v                         v
   +---+        +---+        +---+
-->|   |------->|   |------->|   |--->
<--|   |<-------|   |<-------|   |<---
   +---+        +---+        +---+

     ^            ^            ^
      \           |            /
       ------- Buffer---------

If we perform a list_del_init() on the reader page we will actually remove
the last page the reader swapped with and not the reader page itself.
This will cause that page to not be freed, and thus is a memory leak.

Luckily, the only user of the ring buffer so far is ftrace. And ftrace
will not free its ring buffer after it allocates it. There is no current
possible memory leak. But once there are other users, or if ftrace
dynamically creates and frees its ring buffer, then this would be a
memory leak.

This patch fixes the leak for future cases.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>