On 6/16/20 2:09 PM, Andrew Morton wrote:

On Tue, 16 Jun 2020 11:43:11 -0400 Waiman Long [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

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