Re: [PATCH 1/1] net: hold sock reference while processing tx timestamps

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

On Wed, 2011-10-12 at 20:36 +0200, Richard Cochran wrote:
> The pair of functions,
> 
>  * skb_clone_tx_timestamp()
>  * skb_complete_tx_timestamp()
> 
> were designed to allow timestamping in PHY devices. The first
> function, called during the MAC driver's hard_xmit method, identifies
> PTP protocol packets, clones them, and gives them to the PHY device
> driver. The PHY driver may hold onto the packet and deliver it at a
> later time using the second function, which adds the packet to the
> socket's error queue.
> 
> As pointed out by Johannes, nothing prevents the socket from
> disappearing while the cloned packet is sitting in the PHY driver
> awaiting a timestamp. This patch fixes the issue by taking a reference
> on the socket for each such packet. In addition, the comments
> regarding the usage of these function are expanded to highlight the
> rule that PHY drivers must use skb_complete_tx_timestamp() to release
> the packet, in order to release the socket reference, too.

This still needs a fix to the PHY driver right? It has a case that can
kfree_skb() the skb instead of passing it back to
complete_tx_timestamp().

> -	if (!hwtstamps)
> +	if (!hwtstamps) {
> +		sock_put(sk);
> +		kfree_skb(skb);
>  		return;
> +	}

Is that right w/o skb->sk = NULL?


The other thing I was wondering -- what if we just set truesize to 1 (we
don't have any truesize checks) and account the skb to the socket
normally. Not really a good way either though.

FWIW I just decided to do it the other way around in mac80211 -- keep
the original SKB that's charged to the socket for the error queue, and
use a clone to actually do the TX.

johannes