[RFC PATCH 2/2] mtd: ubi: wl: avoid erasing a PEB which is empty

[Richard Weinberger]

Am 24.11.2015 um 09:42 schrieb Sebastian Andrzej Siewior:
> On 11/24/2015 09:39 AM, Richard Weinberger wrote:
>>>>> +	} else {
>>>>> +		err = do_sync_erase(ubi, e2, vol_id, lnum, torture);
>>>>> +		if (err) {
>>>>> +			wl_entry_destroy(ubi, e2);
>>>>
>>>> Why that? The erase_worker will free e2 if it encounters
>>>> a fatal error and gives up this PEB. You're introducing a double free.
>>>
>>> Hmmm. That is real bad error handling you have there. So you invoke
>>> do_sync_erase(), the kmalloc() fails and how exactly you free e2 here?
>>
>> Why do you want to free e2? We free an erase entry only if we give
>> it up. wear leveling entries are allocated at init time and destroyed
>> when you detach UBI.
> 
> The reference to it in the RB-tree (free) was removed. Is there another
> reference to it?

UBI supports only single references.
Everything else would be a bug.

That said, I agree that the error handling in the wear_leveling_worker()
can be improved.
Especially as currently an error while do_sync_erase() puts UBI into read-only
mode and cleanup is skipped as we're in read-only anyway then.
Would you volunteer? :-)

Thanks,
//richard