[PATCH bpf] xsk: Do not free ZC Rx buffer when the Rx ring is full

From: Marcin Knap via B4 Relay

Date: Mon Oct 19 2026 - 04:27:46 EST


From: Marcin Knap <marcin.knap@xxxxxxxxxx>

When an XDP program redirects a zero-copy buffer to an XSK and the
socket's Rx ring is full, xsk_rcv_zc() frees the buffer and returns
-ENOBUFS to xdp_do_redirect().

A failed xdp_do_redirect() leaves the buffer owned by the caller, and
drivers rely on that: mlx5e treats the failure as XDP_DROP and releases
the buffer when the Rx WQE is refilled, and i40e and ice free it on
XDP_CONSUMED. The buffer is therefore freed twice. It gets reused for
another Rx descriptor, the second free puts an in-use buffer back on
the pool free list, and the same UMEM frame is later handed to user
space twice. On mlx5 with striding RQ this also ended in a NULL pointer
dereference in mlx5e_post_rx_wqes().

Leave the buffer with the caller on both the single-buffer and the
multi-buffer -ENOBUFS paths, as xsk_rcv() and xsk_rcv_check() already
do. i40e and ice relied on the core freeing the buffer on their
need_wakeup -ENOBUFS (XDP_EXIT) path, so make them free it there.

Seen on Mellanox ConnectX-6 DX MT2892 (FW 22.47.1026) with AF_XDP
zero-copy on 7.3.0-rc6 when the user-space consumer could not keep up
with the Rx ring. With this change no duplicate frames were seen with
striding RQ on or off.

Fixes: 269009893146 ("xsk: recycle buffer in case Rx queue was full")
Signed-off-by: Marcin Knap <marcin.knap@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Tested on mlx5 (ConnectX-6 DX) in zero-copy single-buffer mode.
The i40e and ice changes and the multi-buffer path are build-tested
only, as I don't have that hardware available.
---
drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_xsk.c | 1 +
drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_xsk.c | 1 +
net/xdp/xsk.c | 15 +++------------
3 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_xsk.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_xsk.c
index 9f47388eaba5..d32c7255f0b3 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_xsk.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/i40e/i40e_xsk.c
@@ -358,6 +358,7 @@ static void i40e_handle_xdp_result_zc(struct i40e_ring *rx_ring,
return;

if (xdp_res == I40E_XDP_EXIT) {
+ xsk_buff_free(xdp_buff);
*failure = true;
return;
}
diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_xsk.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_xsk.c
index 0643017541c3..7c1dd4c87a71 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_xsk.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_xsk.c
@@ -636,6 +636,7 @@ int ice_clean_rx_irq_zc(struct ice_rx_ring *rx_ring,
if (likely(xdp_res & (ICE_XDP_TX | ICE_XDP_REDIR))) {
xdp_xmit |= xdp_res;
} else if (xdp_res == ICE_XDP_EXIT) {
+ xsk_buff_free(first);
failure = true;
first = NULL;
break;
diff --git a/net/xdp/xsk.c b/net/xdp/xsk.c
index 33475b180ea6..0edc160c660f 100644
--- a/net/xdp/xsk.c
+++ b/net/xdp/xsk.c
@@ -224,21 +224,15 @@ static int xsk_rcv_zc(struct xdp_sock *xs, struct xdp_buff *xdp, u32 len)
struct list_head *xskb_list;
u32 contd = 0;
u32 num_desc;
- int err;

- if (likely(!frags)) {
- err = __xsk_rcv_zc(xs, xskb, len, contd);
- if (err)
- goto err;
- return 0;
- }
+ if (likely(!frags))
+ return __xsk_rcv_zc(xs, xskb, len, contd);

contd = XDP_PKT_CONTD;
num_desc = xdp_get_shared_info_from_buff(xdp)->nr_frags + 1;
if (xskq_prod_nb_free(xs->rx, num_desc) < num_desc) {
xs->rx_queue_full++;
- err = -ENOBUFS;
- goto err;
+ return -ENOBUFS;
}

__xsk_rcv_zc_safe(xs, xskb, len, contd);
@@ -252,9 +246,6 @@ static int xsk_rcv_zc(struct xdp_sock *xs, struct xdp_buff *xdp, u32 len)
}

return 0;
-err:
- xsk_buff_free(xdp);
- return err;
}

static void *xsk_copy_xdp_start(struct xdp_buff *from)

---
base-commit: ff47652a4b66c067c765a7ad464d930b5a9367cc
change-id: 20261019-xsk-zc-rx-double-free-1a3b059cd41f

Best regards,
--
Marcin Knap <marcin.knap@xxxxxxxxxx>