Thread (4 messages) flat view 4 messages, 4 authors, 2025-11-12
STALE314d

[PATCH] net: Fix error handling in netdev_register_kobject

From: Ma Ke <hidden>
Date: 2025-11-07 08:01:43
Also in: lkml, stable
Subsystem: networking [general], the rest · Maintainers: "David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds

After calling device_initialize(), the reference count of the device
is set to 1. If device_add() fails or register_queue_kobjects() fails,
the function returns without calling put_device() to release the
initial reference, causing a memory leak of the device structure.
Similarly, in netdev_unregister_kobject(), after calling device_del(),
there is no call to put_device() to release the initial reference,
leading to a memory leak. Add put_device() in the error paths of
netdev_register_kobject() and after device_del() in
netdev_unregister_kobject() to properly release the device references.

Found by code review.

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Fixes: a1b3f594dc5f ("net: Expose all network devices in a namespaces in sysfs")
Signed-off-by: Ma Ke <redacted>
---
 net/core/net-sysfs.c | 7 ++++++-
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/net/core/net-sysfs.c b/net/core/net-sysfs.c
index ca878525ad7c..d3895f26a0c8 100644
--- a/net/core/net-sysfs.c
+++ b/net/core/net-sysfs.c
@@ -2327,6 +2327,7 @@ void netdev_unregister_kobject(struct net_device *ndev)
 	pm_runtime_set_memalloc_noio(dev, false);
 
 	device_del(dev);
+	put_device(dev);
 }
 
 /* Create sysfs entries for network device. */
@@ -2357,7 +2358,7 @@ int netdev_register_kobject(struct net_device *ndev)
 
 	error = device_add(dev);
 	if (error)
-		return error;
+		goto out_put_device;
 
 	error = register_queue_kobjects(ndev);
 	if (error) {
@@ -2367,6 +2368,10 @@ int netdev_register_kobject(struct net_device *ndev)
 
 	pm_runtime_set_memalloc_noio(dev, true);
 
+	return 0;
+
+out_put_device:
+	put_device(dev);
 	return error;
 }
 
-- 
2.17.1
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