Re: [PATCH v1 00/11] Zero page->private when freeing pages

[Zi Yan]

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