Thread (15 messages) 15 messages, 2 authors, 28d ago

[PATCH v4 04/12] arm64: kexec_file: Fix elf_headers memory leak in retry loop

COLD28d

From: Jinjie Ruan <hidden>
Date: 2026-09-07 12:53:53
Also in: kexec, linux-fsdevel, linux-mm, lkml, loongarch
Subsystem: arm64 port (aarch64 architecture), the rest · Maintainers: Catalin Marinas, Will Deacon, Linus Torvalds

Revision v4 of 3 in this series.

Revisions (3)
  1. v3 [diff vs current]
  2. v4 current
  3. v5 [diff vs current]
If load_other_segments() fails after image->elf_headers is assigned,
the memory lifecycle is safely managed by the global kimage object
and will be freed in arch_kimage_file_post_load_cleanup().

However, during a retry loop in image_load(), a subsequent iteration
will allocate a new buffer and overwrite image->elf_headers. This
permanently leaks the stale memory from the previous iteration before
the global cleanup can track it.

Fix this by explicitly freeing the stale `image->elf_headers` buffer
before assigning the newly allocated headers.

Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Huth <redacted>
Cc: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Yeoreum Yun <redacted>
Cc: Baoquan He <redacted>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Fixes: 108aa503657e ("arm64: kexec_file: try more regions if loading segments fails")
Signed-off-by: Jinjie Ruan <redacted>
---
 arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c | 4 ++++
 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
index e48f29167b38..2f750e5f4fcc 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/machine_kexec_file.c
@@ -112,6 +112,10 @@ int load_other_segments(struct kimage *image,
 			vfree(headers);
 			goto out_err;
 		}
+
+		if (unlikely(image->elf_headers))
+			vfree(image->elf_headers);
+
 		image->elf_headers = headers;
 		image->elf_load_addr = kbuf.mem;
 		image->elf_headers_sz = headers_sz;
-- 
2.34.1

Keyboard shortcuts
hback out one level
jnext message in thread
kprevious message in thread
ldrill in
Escclose help / fold thread tree
?toggle this help