Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v3] page_pool: Add page_pool_release_stalled tracepoint

From: Jakub Kicinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2026 08:43:47 -0800

On Fri, 2 Jan 2026 12:43:46 +0100 Jesper Dangaard Brouer wrote:
> On 02/01/2026 08.17, Leon Hwang wrote:
> > Introduce a new tracepoint to track stalled page pool releases,
> > providing better observability for page pool lifecycle issues.
> 
> In general I like/support adding this tracepoint for "debugability" of
> page pool lifecycle issues.
> 
> For "observability" @Kuba added a netlink scheme[1][2] for page_pool[3], 
> which gives us the ability to get events and list page_pools from userspace.
> I've not used this myself (yet) so I need input from others if this is 
> something that others have been using for page pool lifecycle issues?

My input here is the least valuable (since one may expect the person
who added the code uses it) - but FWIW yes, we do use the PP stats to
monitor PP lifecycle issues at Meta. That said - we only monitor for
accumulation of leaked memory from orphaned pages, as the whole reason
for adding this code was that in practice the page may be sitting in
a socket rx queue (or defer free queue etc.) IOW a PP which is not
getting destroyed for a long time is not necessarily a kernel issue.

> Need input from @Kuba/others as the "page-pool-get"[4] state that "Only 
> Page Pools associated with a net_device can be listed".  Don't we want 
> the ability to list "invisible" page_pool's to allow debugging issues?
> 
>   [1] https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/netlink/intro-specs.html
>   [2] https://docs.kernel.org/userspace-api/netlink/index.html
>   [3] https://docs.kernel.org/netlink/specs/netdev.html
>   [4] https://docs.kernel.org/netlink/specs/netdev.html#page-pool-get

The documentation should probably be updated :(
I think what I meant is that most _drivers_ didn't link their PP to the
netdev via params when the API was added. So if the user doesn't see the
page pools - the driver is probably not well maintained.

In practice only page pools which are not accessible / visible via the
API are page pools from already destroyed network namespaces (assuming
their netdevs were also destroyed and not re-parented to init_net).
Which I'd think is a rare case?

> Looking at the code, I see that NETDEV_CMD_PAGE_POOL_CHANGE_NTF netlink
> notification is only generated once (in page_pool_destroy) and not when
> we retry in page_pool_release_retry (like this patch).  In that sense,
> this patch/tracepoint is catching something more than netlink provides.
> First I though we could add a netlink notification, but I can imagine
> cases this could generate too many netlink messages e.g. a netdev with
> 128 RX queues generating these every second for every RX queue.

FWIW yes, we can add more notifications. Tho, as I mentioned at the
start of my reply - the expectation is that page pools waiting for
a long time to be destroyed is something that _will_ happen in
production.

> Guess, I've talked myself into liking this change, what do other
> maintainers think?  (e.g. netlink scheme and debugging balance)

We added the Netlink API to mute the pr_warn() in all practical cases.
If Xiang Mei is seeing the pr_warn() I think we should start by asking
what kernel and driver they are using, and what the usage pattern is :(
As I mentioned most commonly the pr_warn() will trigger because driver
doesn't link the pp to a netdev.