linux-kernel - Re: [Intel-wired-lan] [RFT net-next PATCH RESEND 0/2] ethernet: intel: fix freeing uninitialized pointers with _

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Message-ID: <f34adbc99606c1f9157112123b7039d2a5bb589e.camel@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2025 13:39:31 +0530
From: ally heev <allyheev@...il.com>
To: Tony Nguyen <anthony.l.nguyen@...el.com>, Przemek Kitszel	
 <przemyslaw.kitszel@...el.com>, Andrew Lunn <andrew+netdev@...n.ch>, "David
 S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>, Jakub
 Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,  Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>, Alexander
 Lobakin <aleksander.lobakin@...el.com>
Cc: intel-wired-lan@...ts.osuosl.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org, 
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Simon Horman <horms@...nel.org>, Dan
 Carpenter	 <dan.carpenter@...aro.org>
Subject: Re: [Intel-wired-lan] [RFT net-next PATCH RESEND 0/2] ethernet:
 intel: fix freeing uninitialized pointers with __free

On Tue, 2025-12-02 at 10:17 -0800, Tony Nguyen wrote:
> 
> On 12/2/2025 11:47 AM, ally heev wrote:
> > On Mon, 2025-12-01 at 13:40 -0800, Tony Nguyen wrote:
> > > 
> > > On 11/23/2025 11:40 PM, Ally Heev wrote:
> > > > Uninitialized pointers with `__free` attribute can cause undefined
> > > > behavior as the memory assigned randomly to the pointer is freed
> > > > automatically when the pointer goes out of scope.
> > > > 
> > > > We could just fix it by initializing the pointer to NULL, but, as usage of
> > > > cleanup attributes is discouraged in net [1], trying to achieve cleanup
> > > > using goto
> > > 
> > > These two drivers already have multiple other usages of this. All the
> > > other instances initialize to NULL; I'd prefer to see this do the same
> > > over changing this single instance.
> > > 
> > 
> > Other usages are slightly complicated to be refactored and might need
> > good testing. Do you want me to do it in a different series?
> 
> Hi Ally,
> 
> Sorry, I think I was unclear. I'd prefer these two initialized to NULL, 
> to match the other usages, over removing the __free() from them.

I had a patch for that already, but, isn't using __free discouraged in
networking drivers [1]? Simon was against it [2]

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/aQ9xp9pchMwml30P@horms.kernel.org/
[1] https://docs.kernel.org/process/maintainer-netdev.html#using-device-managed-and-cleanup-h-constructs

Regards,
Ally