[PATCH] [PATCH v4] lib/ethdev: fix segfault in secondary process by validating dev_private pointer

[Stephen Hemminger]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2025 03:49:01 +0000
"Varghese, Vipin" <Vipin.Varghese at amd.com> wrote:

> [Public]
> 
> Since somehow the email are split it is difficult to see the indexing
> 
> >
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> > Hi Stephen,
> >
> > Many thanks for diving deeper into the issue and sharing the insights.
> >
> > I agree. given that the primary tears down all the devices on exit, the secondary is
> > left with dangling pointers and inconsistent state.  
> 
> Secondary if PMD should not be attempting to cleanup (especially for ethdev_ptr shared from primary) I agree to that.
> But should not be covered in library or PMD. While cleanup for other needs to be done properly
> 
>  Without a mechanism to notify or synchronize that teardown,
> 
> You already have health check added in the code for identify if primay is still alive or not..
> There used to be MP thread spawned which actually piggy back the communication. Is this broken? Can you please point to git

There is no easy way to handle the case where primary crashes; leaving secondary process with
pointers to dead data.