Summary
Most dynamic memory allocation (and freeing) in the kernel is done via the kernel's powerful slab (internally, SLUB) interfaces. To debug them, the kernel provides a strong SLUB debug framework and several associated utilities (slabtop, slabratetop [-bpfcc], vmstat, and so on). Here, you learned how to catch SLUB bugs via the kernel's SLUB debug framework as well as how to leverage these utilities.
Among memory bugs, the very mention of the leakage defect raises dread and fear, even in very experienced developers! It's a deadly one indeed, as we (hopefully) showed you in the Can I see some real kernel memory leakage bugs? section! The kernel's powerful kmemleak framework can catch these dangerous leakage bugs. Be sure to test your product (for long durations) with it running!
As we covered these tools and frameworks, we tabulated the results, showing you the bugs a given tool can (or cannot) catch. To then summarize the whole thing, we built a larger...
