[PATCH v1 1/4] wifi: ath11k: free tx skbs through ieee80211_free_txskb()

Julius Bairaktaris julius at bairaktaris.de
Sun Aug 23 12:57:00 PDT 2026


ath11k_dp_tx_free_txbuf(), reached from the HTT tx completion handler for
the REINJ and INSPECT statuses, releases the frame with
dev_kfree_skb_any(). Every other tx completion path in dp_tx.c hands the
skb back to mac80211, and this one is the last that does not.

A frame freed that way keeps whatever state mac80211 was holding for it.
A data frame whose socket asked for tx status has a clone parked in
local->ack_status_frames and an index allocated from an idr bounded at
8191 entries; ieee80211_free_txskb() releases both through
ieee80211_report_used_skb(), and dev_kfree_skb_any() leaks them for the
lifetime of the hw. Commit 29d15589f084 ("wifi: ath11k: Cleanup mac80211
references on failure during tx_complete") converted three sibling paths
for exactly that reason and left this one.

Fixes: d5c65159f289 ("ath11k: driver for Qualcomm IEEE 802.11ax devices")
Cc: stable at vger.kernel.org
Tested-on: IPQ8074 hw2.0 AHB WLAN.HK.2.9.0.1-02146-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-5
Signed-off-by: Julius Bairaktaris <julius at bairaktaris.de>
---
 drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/dp_tx.c | 3 ++-
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/dp_tx.c b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/dp_tx.c
index cac970c92806..52c4a9924a31 100644
--- a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/dp_tx.c
+++ b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath11k/dp_tx.c
@@ -305,9 +305,10 @@ static void ath11k_dp_tx_free_txbuf(struct ath11k_base *ab, u8 mac_id,
 	skb_cb = ATH11K_SKB_CB(msdu);
 
 	dma_unmap_single(ab->dev, skb_cb->paddr, msdu->len, DMA_TO_DEVICE);
-	dev_kfree_skb_any(msdu);
 
 	ar = ab->pdevs[mac_id].ar;
+	ieee80211_free_txskb(ar->hw, msdu);
+
 	if (atomic_dec_and_test(&ar->dp.num_tx_pending))
 		wake_up(&ar->dp.tx_empty_waitq);
 }
-- 
2.53.0




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