diff options
| author | Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> | 2023-03-02 16:01:00 +0100 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> | 2023-03-29 10:35:41 +0200 |
| commit | ae65a5211d90e54ae604012ce9cf234c48780929 (patch) | |
| tree | 426cc35415d01738cf68cbe05f2a587a7713859d /Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst | |
| parent | 6630e950d532ffabce3a4bdbac7be844bad193fe (diff) | |
mm/slab: document kfree() as allowed for kmem_cache_alloc() objects
This will make it easier to free objects in situations when they can
come from either kmalloc() or kmem_cache_alloc(), and also allow
kfree_rcu() for freeing objects from kmem_cache_alloc().
For the SLAB and SLUB allocators this was always possible so with SLOB
gone, we can document it as supported.
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport (IBM) <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org>
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <frederic@kernel.org>
Cc: Neeraj Upadhyay <quic_neeraju@quicinc.com>
Cc: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Lai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@gmail.com>
Cc: Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst | 17 |
1 files changed, 13 insertions, 4 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst b/Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst index 5954ddf6ee13..1c58d883b273 100644 --- a/Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst +++ b/Documentation/core-api/memory-allocation.rst @@ -170,7 +170,16 @@ should be used if a part of the cache might be copied to the userspace. After the cache is created kmem_cache_alloc() and its convenience wrappers can allocate memory from that cache. -When the allocated memory is no longer needed it must be freed. You can -use kvfree() for the memory allocated with `kmalloc`, `vmalloc` and -`kvmalloc`. The slab caches should be freed with kmem_cache_free(). And -don't forget to destroy the cache with kmem_cache_destroy(). +When the allocated memory is no longer needed it must be freed. + +Objects allocated by `kmalloc` can be freed by `kfree` or `kvfree`. Objects +allocated by `kmem_cache_alloc` can be freed with `kmem_cache_free`, `kfree` +or `kvfree`, where the latter two might be more convenient thanks to not +needing the kmem_cache pointer. + +The same rules apply to _bulk and _rcu flavors of freeing functions. + +Memory allocated by `vmalloc` can be freed with `vfree` or `kvfree`. +Memory allocated by `kvmalloc` can be freed with `kvfree`. +Caches created by `kmem_cache_create` should be freed with +`kmem_cache_destroy` only after freeing all the allocated objects first. |