Thread (5 messages) 5 messages, 3 authors, 2026-01-27

Re: [PATCH] netns: optimize netns cleaning by batching unhash_nsid calls

From: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Date: 2026-01-26 10:46:20
Also in: lkml

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 10:47 AM Qiliang Yuan [off-list ref] wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
Currently, unhash_nsid() scans the entire net_namespace_list for each
netns in a destruction batch during cleanup_net(). This leads to
an O(M * N) complexity, where M is the batch size and N is the total
number of namespaces in the system.

Reduce the complexity to O(N) by introducing an 'is_dying' flag to mark
the entire batch of namespaces being destroyed. This allows unhash_nsid()
to perform a single-pass traversal over the system's namespaces. In
this pass, for each survivor namespace, iterate through its netns_ids
and remove any mappings that point to a marked namespace.

Signed-off-by: Qiliang Yuan <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Qiliang Yuan <redacted>
---
 include/net/net_namespace.h |  1 +
 net/core/net_namespace.c    | 50 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++----------
 2 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
diff --git a/include/net/net_namespace.h b/include/net/net_namespace.h
index cb664f6e3558..bd1acc6056ac 100644
--- a/include/net/net_namespace.h
+++ b/include/net/net_namespace.h
@@ -69,6 +69,7 @@ struct net {

        unsigned int            dev_base_seq;   /* protected by rtnl_mutex */
        u32                     ifindex;
+       bool                    is_dying;

        spinlock_t              nsid_lock;
        atomic_t                fnhe_genid;
diff --git a/net/core/net_namespace.c b/net/core/net_namespace.c
index a6e6a964a287..d24e46c034f2 100644
--- a/net/core/net_namespace.c
+++ b/net/core/net_namespace.c
@@ -413,6 +413,8 @@ static __net_init int preinit_net(struct net *net, struct user_namespace *user_n

        get_random_bytes(&net->hash_mix, sizeof(u32));
        net->dev_base_seq = 1;
+       net->ifindex = 0;
Unrelated change (and not needed)
+       net->is_dying = false;
No need to clear fields, whole net is cleared at alloc time (zalloc)
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
        net->user_ns = user_ns;

        idr_init(&net->netns_ids);
@@ -624,9 +626,10 @@ void net_ns_get_ownership(const struct net *net, kuid_t *uid, kgid_t *gid)
 }
 EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(net_ns_get_ownership);

-static void unhash_nsid(struct net *net, struct net *last)
+static void unhash_nsid(struct net *last)
 {
        struct net *tmp;
+
        /* This function is only called from cleanup_net() work,
         * and this work is the only process, that may delete
         * a net from net_namespace_list. So, when the below
@@ -636,20 +639,34 @@ static void unhash_nsid(struct net *net, struct net *last)
        for_each_net(tmp) {
                int id;

-               spin_lock(&tmp->nsid_lock);
-               id = __peernet2id(tmp, net);
-               if (id >= 0)
-                       idr_remove(&tmp->netns_ids, id);
-               spin_unlock(&tmp->nsid_lock);
-               if (id >= 0)
-                       rtnl_net_notifyid(tmp, RTM_DELNSID, id, 0, NULL,
-                                         GFP_KERNEL);
+               for (id = 0; ; id++) {
+                       struct net *peer;
+                       bool dying;
+
+                       rcu_read_lock();
+                       peer = idr_get_next(&tmp->netns_ids, &id);
+                       dying = peer && peer->is_dying;
+                       rcu_read_unlock();
Hopefully the number of entries in netns_ids is small, otherwise this
could have O(N*M) complexity.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
+
+                       if (!peer)
+                               break;
+                       if (!dying)
+                               continue;
+
+                       spin_lock(&tmp->nsid_lock);
+                       if (idr_find(&tmp->netns_ids, id) == peer)
+                               idr_remove(&tmp->netns_ids, id);
+                       else
+                               peer = NULL;
+                       spin_unlock(&tmp->nsid_lock);
+
+                       if (peer)
+                               rtnl_net_notifyid(tmp, RTM_DELNSID, id, 0,
+                                                 NULL, GFP_KERNEL);
+               }
                if (tmp == last)
                        break;
        }
-       spin_lock(&net->nsid_lock);
-       idr_destroy(&net->netns_ids);
-       spin_unlock(&net->nsid_lock);
 }

 static LLIST_HEAD(cleanup_list);
@@ -688,8 +705,15 @@ static void cleanup_net(struct work_struct *work)
        last = list_last_entry(&net_namespace_list, struct net, list);
        up_write(&net_rwsem);

+       llist_for_each_entry(net, net_kill_list, cleanup_list)
+               net->is_dying = true;
Move this to __put_net(), no need for yet another loop.
+
+       unhash_nsid(last);
+
        llist_for_each_entry(net, net_kill_list, cleanup_list) {
-               unhash_nsid(net, last);
+               spin_lock(&net->nsid_lock);
+               idr_destroy(&net->netns_ids);
+               spin_unlock(&net->nsid_lock);
                list_add_tail(&net->exit_list, &net_exit_list);
        }

--
2.51.0
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