GitLab

Patch series "tweak kmemleak report format".

These 2 patches make minor changes to the report:

1st strips "age <increasing>" from output.  This makes the output
idempotent; unchanging until a new leak is reported.

2nd adds the backtrace.checksum to the "backtrace:" line.  This lets a
user see repeats without actually reading the whole backtrace.  So now
the backtrace line looks like this:

  backtrace (crc 603070071):

I surveyed for un-wanted effects upon users:

Syzkaller parses kmemleak in executor/common_linux.h:
static void check_leaks(char** frames, int nframes)

It just counts occurrences of "unreferenced object", specifically it
does not look for "age", nor would it choke on "crc" being added.

github has 3 repos with "kmemleak" mentioned, all are moribund.
gitlab has 0 hits on "kmemleak".


This patch (of 2):

Displaying age is pretty, but counter-productive; it changes with
current-time, so it surrenders idempotency of the output, which breaks
simple hash-based cataloging of the records by the user.

The trouble: sequential reads, wo new leaks, get new results:

  :#> sum /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
  53439    74 /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
  :#> sum /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak
  59066    74 /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak

and age is why (nothing else changes):

  :#> grep -v age /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak | sum
  58894    67
  :#> grep -v age /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak | sum
  58894    67

Since jiffies is already printed in the "comm" line, age adds nothing.

Notably, syzkaller reads kmemleak only for "unreferenced object", and
won't care about this reform of age-ism.  A few moribund github repos
mention it, but don't compile.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231116224318.124209-1-jim.cromie@gmail.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20231116224318.124209-2-jim.cromie@gmail.com

Signed-off-by: Jim Cromie <jim.cromie@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>