4d92b95ff2
net device are refcounted. Over the years we had numerous bugs caused by imbalanced dev_hold() and dev_put() calls. The general idea is to be able to precisely pair each decrement with a corresponding prior increment. Both share a cookie, basically a pointer to private data storing stack traces. This patch adds dev_hold_track() and dev_put_track(). To use these helpers, each data structure owning a refcount should also use a "netdevice_tracker" to pair the hold and put. netdevice_tracker dev_tracker; ... dev_hold_track(dev, &dev_tracker, GFP_ATOMIC); ... dev_put_track(dev, &dev_tracker); Whenever a leak happens, we will get precise stack traces of the point dev_hold_track() happened, at device dismantle phase. We will also get a stack trace if too many dev_put_track() for the same netdevice_tracker are attempted. This is guarded by CONFIG_NET_DEV_REFCNT_TRACKER option. Signed-off-by: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com> Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.