On 23 Feb 2026, at 8:46, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 10:26:30PM -0500, Zi Yan wrote: >> Hi all, >> >> Based on a recent discussion with David Hildenbrand on page->private >> is not zero when a page is freed[1], this patchset is trying to fix all >> users do not zero ->private when freeing a page and add checks to make >> sure all freed pages have ->private set to zero. For compound pages, >> both head page and tail pages need to have ->private set to zero. > > Requiring the user to clear a field before freeing is just a way to > awkward interface. Don't do that.
Page allocator hands the user a zero ->private. I think it is reasonable to require the user to return a zero ->private. Restoring things back to their original states is a common standard, isn't it? And most of users do that. Do you have any example that shows doing such a thing is difficult, if not impossible? -- Best Regards, Yan, Zi
