Re: [PATCH ath-current v2] wifi: ath11k: cleanup arsta in ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all()

[Jeff Johnson <jeff.johnson@oss.qualcomm.com>]

On 7/30/2026 7:02 AM, Nicolas Escande wrote:
> When mac80211 removes a sta, it calls .sta_state() which in turn calls
> ath11k_mac_station_remove(). In that function we clean up both  peers &

nit: extra whitespace in "both  peers"

> arsta related resources.
> 
> But when the firmware crashes, ath11k calls ieee80211_restart_hw(), which
> assumes that all driver related resources are cleanup up beforehand. This
> cleanup is supposedly done by ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all() but does not
> in fact free arsta->rx_stats / tx_stats.
> 
> So lets extract the arsta cleanup from ath11k_mac_station_remove() into a
> new ath11k_mac_station_cleanup() and call it from both there and
> ath11k_mac_peer_cleanup_all().
> 
> This should handle kmemleaks reports like:
> 	unreferenced object 0xffffff801ae66400 (size 1024):
> 	  comm "hostapd", pid 1306, jiffies 4295011565
> 	  hex dump (first 32 bytes):
> 	    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
> 	    00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................
> 	  backtrace (crc d61c08ec):
> 	    kmemleak_alloc+0x3c/0x50
> 	    __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x2b0/0x3e0
> 	    ath11k_mac_op_sta_state+0x1dc/0xb10
> 	    drv_sta_state+0xac/0x6f8
> 	    sta_info_insert_rcu+0x314/0x5e0
> 	    sta_info_insert+0x14/0x38
> 	    ieee80211_add_station+0x10c/0x1a0
> 	    nl80211_new_station+0x3e8/0x680
> 	    genl_family_rcv_msg_doit+0xc0/0x120
> 	    genl_rcv_msg+0x1b4/0x258
> 	    netlink_rcv_skb+0x4c/0x108
> 	    genl_rcv+0x38/0x60
> 	    netlink_unicast+0x190/0x278
> 	    netlink_sendmsg+0x15c/0x370
> 	    ____sys_sendmsg+0x120/0x290
> 	    ___sys_sendmsg+0x70/0xa0
> 
> Tested-on: QCN9074 PCI WLAN.HK.2.9.0.1-01977-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1
> 
> Fixes: 9d5f28c1366f ("wifi: ath11k: fix connection failure due to unexpected peer delete")
> Signed-off-by: Nicolas Escande <nico.escande@gmail.com>
> ---
>  Note: this problem is in fact older that the referenced commit, but as
>  it would need another patch to backport to older kernel and the leak is
>  quite minimal & seldom happens, I was hopping to not have to do it.

IMO you should have Fixes: identify the patch that actually introduced the
issue. The stable team will backport to the best of their ability, and you can
always choose to not have it backported to LTS kernels that are too old

> 
> v2:
> 	- rebased on ath/master
> 	- no code change
> ---

my review agent had no issues with the code change

/jeff