Leah Rowe 7f39ce5f9b libreboot-utils: extremely safe(ish) malloc usage ...

yes, a common thing in C programs is one or all
of the following:

* use after frees
* double free (on non-NULL pointer)
* over-writing currently used pointer (mem leak)

i try to reduce the chance of this in my software,
by running free() through a filter function,
free_if_not_null, that returns if a function
is being freed twice - because it sets NULL
after freeing, but will only free if it's not
null already.

this patch adds two functions: smalloc and vmalloc,
for strings and voids. using these makes the program
abort if:

* non-null pointer given for initialisation
* pointer to pointer is null (of course)
* size of zero given, for malloc (zero bytes)

i myself was caught out by this change, prompting
me to make the following fix in fs_dirname_basename()
inside lib/file.c:

-       char *buf;
+       char *buf = NULL;

Yes.

Signed-off-by: Leah Rowe <leah@libreboot.org>

2026-03-28 04:25:14 +00:00

..

common.h

libreboot-utils: extremely safe(ish) malloc usage

2026-03-28 04:25:14 +00:00