On Wed, Nov 12, 2025 at 09:52:10AM -0800, Breno Leitao wrote: > > The main reason why I opted for a helper in netpoll was to keep reference > > tracking for these devices strictly inside netpoll and have simmetry between > > setup and cleanup. Having said that, this might be an overkill and I'm fine > > with > > dropping the helper and taking your suggestion. > > Right, that makes sense. Would we have other owners for that function?
I've looked at other drivers using netpoll and from what I could find all of them are using __netpoll_setup paired with __netpoll_free. They don't seem to rely on dev_tracker to track references, I'd need to look a bit more to be certain, but I think other callers are own the devices and track their lifecycle separately. So I don't think this would be useful for them. Since we are moving netpoll_cleanup to netconsole in your patch below, I think I should drop the netpoll helper and keep it in netconsole. I wonder if we should consider moving do_netpoll_cleanup to netconsole as well, since it seems to be the only caller and then we would have the same symmetry I mentioned above. So, to summarize, given your refactor patch I think it makes sense drop the previous patch and do the netdev_hold in netconsole as you suggested. Does that sound good? -- Andre Carvalho
