Re: ixgbe: Set IXGBE_RSC_CB(skb)->DMA field to zero after unmapping the address

Malli
2010-03-23T17:40:37Z

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 8:57 PM, Benjamin Herrenschmidt
<benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-03-22 at 17:59 +0000, Linux Kernel Mailing List wrote:
>> Gitweb:     http://git.kernel.org/linus/fd3686a842717b890fbe3024b83a616c54d5dba0
>> Commit:     fd3686a842717b890fbe3024b83a616c54d5dba0
>> Parent:     936332b8e00103fc20eb7e915c9a3bcb2835a11a
>> Author:     Mallikarjuna R Chilakala <mallikarjuna.chilakala@intel.com>
>> AuthorDate: Fri Mar 19 04:41:33 2010 +0000
>> Committer:  David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
>> CommitDate: Fri Mar 19 21:00:44 2010 -0700
>>
>>     ixgbe: Set IXGBE_RSC_CB(skb)->DMA field to zero after unmapping the address
>>
>>     As per Simon Horman's feedback set IXGBE_RSC_CB(skb)->dma to zero
>>     after unmapping HWRSC DMA address to avoid double freeing.
>>
>
> Note that this whole code is bogus :-) You cannot just assume that 0 is
> a invalid DMA address. It is not. In fact, while you can check if a
> dma_addr_t is invalid using dma_mapping_error(), the generic APIs
> don't provide you with a magic "bad" value you can use for what you are
> trying to do.
>
> Granted, I think we should make our iommu code reserve the first page
> for the sake of everybody's sanity and to avoid such pitfalls, but
> this code is wrong with today iommu implementations.
>
> Cheers,
> Ben.

Yes. I just realized that i can't assign a zero magic "bad" value. It is only
valid in x86/arm/m68k/alpha architecures and not in spark & PowerPC arch,
(it should be ~0). In some other architecutres it throws a BUG() on with
dma_mapping_error() checks. So the patch is not a total bogus in some
architectures :(.

May be it is best to create an internal FLAG in IXGBE_RSC_CB(skb)
which can be used to avoid this double freeing.