On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 10:44:54AM -0700, Khalid Aziz wrote: > do_exit() unmaps mmap_state->uaddr, and frees up mmap_state->kaddr > and mmap_state. mmap_state should not be NULL after unmap. vfree() > and kfree() are tolerant of pointers that have already been freed.
Huh? Double free() is a bug, plain and simple. Never do that - not in userland and especially not in the kernel. Think what happens if some code gets executed between those two and asks to allocate something. If it gets the area you'd just freed, your second free will leave it with all kinds of nasty surprises. Starting with "who the hell has started to modify the object I'd allocated and hadn't freed?" A: p = alloc(); A: free(p); B: q = alloc(); /* q == p now */ B: *q = 0; /* *q is zero */ A: free(p); /* same as free(q) */ C: r = alloc(); /* r == q now */ C: *r = 1; /* *q is one */ B: if (*q != 0) panic("somebody's buggering my memory"); It's always a bug, whether the implementation catches it or not. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/