On Sun, Feb 22, 2026 at 10:26:30PM -0500, Zi Yan wrote: > 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.
Sorry, I didn't notice this conversation. It seems entirely unnecessary to me to zero out page->private before freeing. I'm a bit confused that ac1ea219590c was needed too; I thought we cleared page->private in the allocation path, and I don't see why it needs to be cleared in the freeing path. split_page() should be clearing page->private. Can we discuss this at the THP Cabal meeting on Wednesday? I don't think that introducing this new rule that page->private must be cleared by the users is a good idea.
