Improving Resource Ownership and Lifetime in Linux Device Drivers

Dive into a comprehensive exploration of resource ownership and lifetime management in Linux device drivers during this 53-minute conference talk from the Linux Plumbers Conference. Examine recent discussions and research on object ownership issues, use-after-free bugs, and hot unplug event handling challenges in various subsystems. Learn about the harmful side-effects of devres helpers, the mixing of reference counted resources with regular ones, and vulnerable subsystems identified by industry experts. Discover concrete ideas and timelines for improving the driver model and unifying subsystem approaches to driver data handling. Understand the significance of addressing these issues to ensure correct driver unbind handling across multiple device subsystems, and gain insights into the long-term effort required to implement these improvements in the Linux kernel.