Message-ID: <8dc3765b-e97f-4937-b6b9-872a83ba1e26@linux.dev>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2026 16:49:46 +0800
From: Leon Hwang <leon.hwang@...ux.dev>
To: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>, Jesper Dangaard Brouer <hawk@...nel.org>
Cc: netdev@...r.kernel.org, Ilias Apalodimas <ilias.apalodimas@...aro.org>,
 Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>, Masami Hiramatsu
 <mhiramat@...nel.org>, Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@...icios.com>,
 "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>, Eric Dumazet
 <edumazet@...gle.com>, Paolo Abeni <pabeni@...hat.com>,
 Simon Horman <horms@...nel.org>, kerneljasonxing@...il.com,
 lance.yang@...ux.dev, jiayuan.chen@...ux.dev, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-trace-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Leon Huang Fu <leon.huangfu@...pee.com>,
 Dragos Tatulea <dtatulea@...dia.com>,
 kernel-team <kernel-team@...udflare.com>, Yan Zhai <yan@...udflare.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v3] page_pool: Add page_pool_release_stalled
 tracepoint



On 5/1/26 00:43, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 12:43:46 +0100 Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
>> On 02/01/2026 08.17, Leon Hwang wrote:
>>> Introduce a new tracepoint to track stalled page pool releases,
>>> providing better observability for page pool lifecycle issues.
>>
>> In general I like/support adding this tracepoint for "debugability" of
>> page pool lifecycle issues.
>>
>> For "observability" @Kuba added a netlink scheme[1][2] for page_pool[3], 
>> which gives us the ability to get events and list page_pools from userspace.
>> I've not used this myself (yet) so I need input from others if this is 
>> something that others have been using for page pool lifecycle issues?
> 
> My input here is the least valuable (since one may expect the person
> who added the code uses it) - but FWIW yes, we do use the PP stats to
> monitor PP lifecycle issues at Meta. That said - we only monitor for
> accumulation of leaked memory from orphaned pages, as the whole reason
> for adding this code was that in practice the page may be sitting in
> a socket rx queue (or defer free queue etc.) IOW a PP which is not
> getting destroyed for a long time is not necessarily a kernel issue.
> 
>> Need input from @Kuba/others as the "page-pool-get"[4] state that "Only 
>> Page Pools associated with a net_device can be listed".  Don't we want 
>> the ability to list "invisible" page_pool's to allow debugging issues?
>>
>>   [1] https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/netlink/intro-specs.html
>>   [2] https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/netlink/index.html
>>   [3] https://docs.kernel.org/netlink/specs/netdev.html
>>   [4] https://docs.kernel.org/netlink/specs/netdev.html#page-pool-get
> 
> The documentation should probably be updated :(
> I think what I meant is that most _drivers_ didn't link their PP to the
> netdev via params when the API was added. So if the user doesn't see the
> page pools - the driver is probably not well maintained.
> 
> In practice only page pools which are not accessible / visible via the
> API are page pools from already destroyed network namespaces (assuming
> their netdevs were also destroyed and not re-parented to init_net).
> Which I'd think is a rare case?
> 
>> Looking at the code, I see that NETDEV_CMD_PAGE_POOL_CHANGE_NTF netlink
>> notification is only generated once (in page_pool_destroy) and not when
>> we retry in page_pool_release_retry (like this patch).  In that sense,
>> this patch/tracepoint is catching something more than netlink provides.
>> First I though we could add a netlink notification, but I can imagine
>> cases this could generate too many netlink messages e.g. a netdev with
>> 128 RX queues generating these every second for every RX queue.
> 
> FWIW yes, we can add more notifications. Tho, as I mentioned at the
> start of my reply - the expectation is that page pools waiting for
> a long time to be destroyed is something that _will_ happen in
> production.
> 
>> Guess, I've talked myself into liking this change, what do other
>> maintainers think?  (e.g. netlink scheme and debugging balance)
> 
> We added the Netlink API to mute the pr_warn() in all practical cases.
> If Xiang Mei is seeing the pr_warn() I think we should start by asking
> what kernel and driver they are using, and what the usage pattern is :(
> As I mentioned most commonly the pr_warn() will trigger because driver
> doesn't link the pp to a netdev.

Hi Jakub, Jesper,

Thanks for the discussion. Since netlink notifications are only emitted
at page_pool_destroy(), the tracepoint still provides additional
debugging visibility for prolonged page_pool_release_retry() cases.

Steven has reviewed the tracepoint [1]. Any further feedback would be
appreciated.

Thanks,
Leon

[1]
https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/20260102104504.7f593441@gandalf.local.home/

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