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

From: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2026 10:54:13 +0100

On 19/01/2026 09.49, Leon Hwang wrote:
> 
> 
> On 5/1/26 00:43, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
>> 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.
>>

What monitoring tool did production people add metrics to?

People at CF recommend that I/we add this to prometheus/node_exporter.
Perhaps somebody else already added this to some other FOSS tool?

https://github.com/prometheus/node_exporter

>>> 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.
> 
> Hi Jakub, Jesper,
> 
> Thanks for the discussion. Since netlink notifications are only emitted
> at page_pool_destroy(), the tracepoint still provides additional
> debugging visibility for prolonged page_pool_release_retry() cases.
> 
> Steven has reviewed the tracepoint [1]. Any further feedback would be
> appreciated.

This change looks good as-is:

Acked-by: Jesper Dangaard Brouer <[email-masked]>

Your patch[0] is marked as "Changes Requested".
I suggest you send a V4 with my Acked-by added.

--Jesper

[0] 
https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/netdevbpf/patch/[email-masked]/