On 6/16/20 2:09 PM, Andrew Morton wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 11:43:11 -0400 Waiman Long <long...@redhat.com> wrote:
As said by Linus:
A symmetric naming is only helpful if it implies symmetries in use.
Otherwise it's actively misleading.
In "kzalloc()", the z is meaningful and an important part of what the
caller wants.
In "kzfree()", the z is actively detrimental, because maybe in the
future we really _might_ want to use that "memfill(0xdeadbeef)" or
something. The "zero" part of the interface isn't even _relevant_.
The main reason that kzfree() exists is to clear sensitive information
that should not be leaked to other future users of the same memory
objects.
Rename kzfree() to kfree_sensitive() to follow the example of the
recently added kvfree_sensitive() and make the intention of the API
more explicit. In addition, memzero_explicit() is used to clear the
memory to make sure that it won't get optimized away by the compiler.
The renaming is done by using the command sequence:
git grep -w --name-only kzfree |\
xargs sed -i 's/\bkzfree\b/kfree_sensitive/'
followed by some editing of the kfree_sensitive() kerneldoc and adding
a kzfree backward compatibility macro in slab.h.
...
--- a/include/linux/slab.h
+++ b/include/linux/slab.h
@@ -186,10 +186,12 @@ void memcg_deactivate_kmem_caches(struct mem_cgroup *,
struct mem_cgroup *);
*/
void * __must_check krealloc(const void *, size_t, gfp_t);
void kfree(const void *);
-void kzfree(const void *);
+void kfree_sensitive(const void *);
size_t __ksize(const void *);
size_t ksize(const void *);
+#define kzfree(x) kfree_sensitive(x) /* For backward compatibility */
+
What was the thinking here? Is this really necessary?
I suppose we could keep this around for a while to ease migration. But
not for too long, please.
It should be there just for 1 release cycle. I have broken out the btrfs
patch to the btrfs list and I didn't make the kzfree to kfree_sensitive
conversion there as that patch was in front in my patch list. So
depending on which one lands first, there can be a window where the
compilation may fail without this workaround. I am going to send out
another patch in the next release cycle to remove it.
Cheers,
Longman
