Re: [PATCH] net: alteon: Add missing DMA mapping error checks in ace_start_xmit

[Jes Sorensen]

On 3/31/26 9:41 PM, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Tue, 31 Mar 2026 16:43:22 -0700 Joe Damato wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 31, 2026 at 09:48:41AM +0800, Wang Jun wrote:
> > > The ace_start_xmit function does not check the return value of
> > > dma_map_page (via ace_map_tx_skb) and skb_frag_dma_map when building
> > > transmit descriptors. If mapping fails, an invalid DMA address is
> > > written to the descriptor, which may cause hardware to access
> > > illegal memory, leading to system instability or crashes.
> > >
> > > Add proper dma_mapping_error() checks for all mapping calls. When
> > > mapping fails, free the skb, increment the dropped packet counter,
> > > and return NETDEV_TX_OK.
> > >
> > > Fixes: 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
> >
> > Is this fixing a bug you've seen in the wild? If not, I'd probably drop the
> > fixes tag and send this to net-next instead.
>
> Either it's worth fixing in net or its not worth fixing at all.
>
> My preference would be to try to delete this driver completely.

The amount of hardware out there that is functional at this point must 
be in the single digits.