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Linux Kernel Programming

You're reading from   Linux Kernel Programming A comprehensive guide to kernel internals, writing kernel modules, and kernel synchronization

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Product type Paperback
Published in Mar 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781789953435
Length 754 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Kaiwan N. Billimoria Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Author Profile Icon Kaiwan N. Billimoria
Kaiwan N. Billimoria
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Table of Contents (19) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Section 1: The Basics
2. Kernel Workspace Setup FREE CHAPTER 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...
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