Search icon CANCEL
Subscription
0
Cart icon
Cart
Close icon
You have no products in your basket yet
Save more on your purchases!
Savings automatically calculated. No voucher code required
Arrow left icon
All Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Newsletters
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Linux Kernel Programming

You're reading from  Linux Kernel Programming

Product type Book
Published in Mar 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789953435
Pages 754 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
Author (1):
Kaiwan N. Billimoria Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Profile icon Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Toc

Table of Contents (19) Chapters close

Preface 1. Section 1: The Basics
2. Kernel Workspace Setup 3. Building the 5.x Linux Kernel from Source - Part 1 4. Building the 5.x Linux Kernel from Source - Part 2 5. Writing Your First Kernel Module - LKMs Part 1 6. Writing Your First Kernel Module - LKMs Part 2 7. Section 2: Understanding and Working with the Kernel
8. Kernel Internals Essentials - Processes and Threads 9. Memory Management Internals - Essentials 10. Kernel Memory Allocation for Module Authors - Part 1 11. Kernel Memory Allocation for Module Authors - Part 2 12. The CPU Scheduler - Part 1 13. The CPU Scheduler - Part 2 14. Section 3: Delving Deeper
15. Kernel Synchronization - Part 1 16. Kernel Synchronization - Part 2 17. About Packt 18. Other Books You May Enjoy

Freeing slab memory

Of course, you must free the allocated slab memory you allocated at some point in the future (thus not leaking memory); the  kfree() routine serves this purpose. Analogous to the user space free(3) API, kfree() takes a single parameter – the pointer to the memory chunk to free. It must be a valid kernel logical (or virtual) address and must have been initialized by, that is, the return value of, one of the slab layer APIs (k[m|z]alloc() or one of its helpers). Its API signature is simple:

void kfree(const void *);

Just as with free(3), there is no return value. As mentioned before, take care to ensure that the parameter to kfree() is the precise value returned by k[m|z]alloc(). Passing an incorrect value will result in memory corruption, ultimately leading to an unstable system.

There are a few additional points to note.

Let's assume we have allocated some slab memory with kzalloc():

static char *kptr...
lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at $15.99/month. Cancel anytime}