Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm: kmemleak: raise min_unref_scans to 3 for verbose auto-scan

Catalin Marinas <[email protected]>
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.linux-doc,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.workflows,org.kvack.linux-mm
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Thu, Sep 17, 2026 at 06:47:37AM -0700, Breno Leitao wrote:
> CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE sends every report to the console, so a
> transient false positive there is broadcast to whatever collects the
> kernel log rather than sitting in the debugfs file until someone looks.
> That asymmetry justifies being more conservative than the general case.
> 
> Require one more consecutive unreferenced scan before reporting. The
> only cost is that a genuine leak is reported one scan interval later
> (600s by default); the value stays writable at run time through the
> module parameter.
> 
> Kernels without CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE keep reporting on the
> first unreferenced scan.
> 
> I've been running constant upstream kernel with
> CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_VERBOSE set, and I am still seeing some rare false
> positive, that goes away with min_unref_scans=3, so, making it the
> default based on my heuristic.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <[email protected]>

Until someone comes up with a better idea to reduce the false positives,

Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <[email protected]>
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