[Bug]: Intel iHD driver alloc-dealloc-mismatch

[LorenzoCaprari]

Which component impacted?

Video Processing

Is it regression? Good in old configuration?

None

What happened?

Description

When an application uses VA-API for hardware decode (e.g. FFmpeg/libav av_hwframe_transfer_data with VAAPI) and is built with AddressSanitizer, ASan reports:

ERROR: AddressSanitizer: alloc-dealloc-mismatch (malloc vs operator delete []) on 0x...
#0 operator delete[](void*)
#1 ... iHD_drv_video.so ...
#2 vaDestroyImage ... libva.so
#3 ... libavutil ... av_buffer_unref / av_frame_free

Memory is allocated with malloc() (in the driver, during vaCreateImage / image creation path) and freed with operator delete[] (during vaDestroyImage). That is undefined behaviour: allocation and deallocation must use matching functions (malloc/free vs new/delete).

Environment

-Processor: Intel Ultra 7 255U (14) @ 5.200GHz

• Driver: Intel iHD driver for VAAPI (/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/dri/iHD_drv_video.so)
• Driver version: e.g. 24.1.0 (from vainfo: "Driver version: Intel iHD driver for Intel(R) Gen Graphics - 24.1.0")
• libva: e.g. 2.12.0
• OS: e.g. Ubuntu 24.04, x86_64
• Reproduction: Application linked with -fsanitize=address that uses VA-API HW decode and transfers frames (e.g. av_hwframe_transfer_data). Crash occurs when frames are released.

Expected

Allocations from the driver should be freed with the matching deallocator (malloc → free, new → delete).

Actual

Driver frees with operator delete[] memory that was allocated with malloc().

Note

The mismatch is only visible when the application is built with AddressSanitizer. It may manifest only on certain Intel GPU generations (different code paths in the driver).

What's the usage scenario when you are seeing the problem?

Playback

What impacted?

No response

Debug Information

No response

Do you want to contribute a patch to fix the issue?

None