nasty device_delete_child interaction

[John-Mark Gurney]

John Wehle wrote this message on Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 01:35 -0500:
> device_delete_child works by starting with the grandchildren
> working back towards the immediate child.  Several drivers
> (i.e. if_xl.c, if_wx.c, iicbb.c) have code similar to:
> 
>   xxx_attach()
>     {
> 
>       ...
>       sc->child_dev = device_add_child ...
>     }
> 
>   xxx_detach()
>     {
> 
>       bus_generic_detach ();
>       if (sc->child_dev)
>         device_delete_child ...
>     }
> 
> The problem is using device_delete_child on one of these
> drivers causes the grandchild to be freed twice.  When
> device_delete_child is called for xxx, it recurses since
> xxx has a child.  The grandchild is detached and deleted.
> xxx_detach is then called which calls device_delete_child
> for the grandchild a second time causing a panic.

Yes, I know about this problem.  One of the problems with this also is
that the newbus code isn't properly locked, nor are ref counts kept
on who has a pointer, so that as device_delete_child happen, you can
easily end up accessing a free'd device as you point out...

There are many issues with the code, if you are interested in fixing
these, drop me an email and I'll tell you more about them.

I ran into these issues myself when writing my Zoran driver and working
with the iicbus code.

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."