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[PATCH net v4] net: macb: drop in-flight Tx SKBs on close

From: Théo Lebrun <theo.lebrun@bootlin.com>
Date: 2026-07-02 15:37:20
Also in: lkml, stable
Subsystem: atmel macb ethernet driver, networking drivers, the rest · Maintainers: Théo Lebrun, Andrew Lunn, "David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Linus Torvalds

The MACB driver has since forever leaked the outgoing SKBs that
have not yet been marked as completed. They live in queue->tx_skb
which gets freed without remorse nor checking.

macb_free_consistent() gets called in a few codepaths, but only close will
trigger the added expressions. In macb_open() and macb_alloc_consistent()
failure cases, queues' tx_skb just got allocated and are empty.

Fixes: 89e5785fc8a6 ("[PATCH] Atmel MACB ethernet driver")
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Reviewed-by: Nicolai Buchwitz <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Théo Lebrun <theo.lebrun@bootlin.com>
---
Changes in v4:
- Drop the skb_drop_reason code. No other Ethernet driver does that and
  the reasoning (because our stats are broken) is a bad one.
- Take Rb trailer from Nicolai.
- Drop [off-list ref] email that gets rejected.
- Rebase upon latest net/main (d8e8b85a85fe).
- Link to v3: https://patch.msgid.link/20260617-macb-drop-tx-v3-0-d4c7e57d890b@bootlin.com

Changes in v3:
- Drop stats fixing. A proper fix deserves its own net-next refactoring
  series to migrate to netdev_stat_ops (ynltool uAPI), which will come
  in later. We keep the tx_dropped++ because they are safe as every
  other context is disabled when macb_free_consistent() is called.
- Rebased to latest net/main (406e8a651a7b), nothing to report.
- Link to v2: https://patch.msgid.link/20260428-macb-drop-tx-v2-0-647f5199d8df@bootlin.com

Changes in v2:
- Increment tx_dropped stat once per SKB, not once per frame.
- Reset tx_head & tx_tail to avoid keeping stalled cursors.
- Fix SKB dropped reasons throughout by adding the reason as parameter
  to macb_tx_unmap(). This is a new patch. Then the drop-all-on-close
  fix can use this ability to report we are not consuming SKBs.
- Add increment to stats->tx_dropped on DMA mapping failure and
  tx_error_task. Done as separate patches (3 and 4).
- Rebase upon net/main @ 46f74a3f7d57, nothing to report.
- Link to v1: https://patch.msgid.link/20260424-macb-drop-tx-v1-1-b3ecb787d84d@bootlin.com
---
 drivers/net/ethernet/cadence/macb_main.c | 21 +++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/cadence/macb_main.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/cadence/macb_main.c
index fd282a1700fb..d394f1f43b68 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ethernet/cadence/macb_main.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/cadence/macb_main.c
@@ -2668,8 +2668,25 @@ static void macb_free_consistent(struct macb *bp)
 	dma_free_coherent(dev, size, bp->queues[0].rx_ring, bp->queues[0].rx_ring_dma);
 
 	for (q = 0, queue = bp->queues; q < bp->num_queues; ++q, ++queue) {
-		kfree(queue->tx_skb);
-		queue->tx_skb = NULL;
+		if (queue->tx_skb) {
+			unsigned int dropped = 0, tail;
+
+			for (tail = queue->tx_tail; tail != queue->tx_head;
+			     tail++) {
+				if (macb_tx_skb(queue, tail)->skb)
+					dropped++;
+				macb_tx_unmap(bp, macb_tx_skb(queue, tail), 0);
+			}
+
+			queue->stats.tx_dropped += dropped;
+			bp->dev->stats.tx_dropped += dropped;
+
+			kfree(queue->tx_skb);
+			queue->tx_skb = NULL;
+		}
+
+		queue->tx_head = 0;
+		queue->tx_tail = 0;
 		queue->tx_ring = NULL;
 		queue->rx_ring = NULL;
 	}
---
base-commit: d8e8b85a85fe21954d303db68034aac4639df88d
change-id: 20260423-macb-drop-tx-f9ce72720d05

Best regards,
--  
Théo Lebrun [off-list ref]
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