Patch "cxl: Fix unbalanced pci_dev_get in cxl_probe" has been added to the 4.1-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

cxl: Fix unbalanced pci_dev_get in cxl_probe

to the 4.1-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
cxl-fix-unbalanced-pci_dev_get-in-cxl_probe.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.1 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: Daniel Axtens <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:04:07 +1000
Subject: cxl: Fix unbalanced pci_dev_get in cxl_probe

From: Daniel Axtens <[email protected]>

commit 2925c2fdf1e0eb642482f5b30577e9435aaa8edb upstream.

Currently the first thing we do in cxl_probe is to grab a reference on the pci device. Later on, we call device_register on our adapter. In our remove path, we call device_unregister, but we never call pci_dev_put. We therefore leak the device every time we do a reflash.

device_register/unregister is sufficient to hold the reference. Therefore, drop the call to pci_dev_get.

Here's why this is safe.
The proposed cxl_probe(pdev) calls cxl_adapter_init:
a) init calls cxl_adapter_alloc, which creates a struct cxl, conventionally called adapter. This struct contains a device entry, adapter->dev.

b) init calls cxl_configure_adapter, where we set adapter->dev.parent = &dev->dev (here dev is the pci dev)

So at this point, the cxl adapter's device's parent is the PCI device that I want to be refcounted properly.

c) init calls cxl_register_adapter
*) cxl_register_adapter calls device_register(&adapter->dev)

So now we're in device_register, where dev is the adapter device, and we want to know if the PCI device is safe after we return.

device_register(&adapter->dev) calls device_initialize() and then device_add().

device_add() does a get_device(). device_add() also explicitly grabs the device's parent, and calls get_device() on it:

         parent = get_device(dev->parent);

So therefore, device_register() takes a lock on the parent PCI dev, which is what pci_dev_get() was guarding. pci_dev_get() can therefore be safely removed.

---
 drivers/misc/cxl/pci.c |    2 --
 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)

@@ -1046,8 +1046,6 @@ static int cxl_probe(struct pci_dev *dev
 	int slice;
 	int rc;
 
-	pci_dev_get(dev);
-
 	if (cxl_verbose)
 		dump_cxl_config_space(dev);
 

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.1/cxl-remove-racy-attempt-to-force-eeh-invocation-in-reset.patch queue-4.1/cxl-fix-unbalanced-pci_dev_get-in-cxl_probe.patch