Software GRO fails to coalesce small IPv4/TCP segment that was padded up to the 60-byte minimum Ethernet frame. The selftest tools/testing/selftests/drivers/net/hw/gro.py subtest sw_ipv4_data_lrg_1byte sends {100, 1} expecting to receive {101}. In current code, it receives {100, 1} (no coalescing) instead. Cause: inet_gro_receive() computes its flush term from tot_len ^ skb_gro_len() before skb_gro_pull(), while skb_gro_len() still includes trailing Ethernet padding. A small IPv4/TCP segment padded up to the 60-byte minimum frame has tot_len != skb_gro_len(), so flush is set and the runt never coalesces. Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8 Assisted-by: Codex:gpt-5.6 Assisted-by: Meta:internal-AI-tooling Signed-off-by: Glenn Judd --- Notes: RFC notes --------- Per Jakub Kicinski, the open question is fast-path cost: this adds two operations to the common IPv4 GRO path for every packet -- reading iph->tot_len and the skb_gro_len() comparison. Everything expensive (linear check, trim, pointer refresh, csum recompute) is behind unlikely() on the slow path. Is that per-packet cost worth the coalescing win for padded runts? Testing: netdevsim cannot reproduce this -- it never pads short frames to ETH_ZLEN -- so sw_ipv4_data_lrg_1byte passes trivially there. Reproduced and fixed on a real NIC (cx7): baseline FAIL -> patched PASS. Also validated locally under KASAN + CONFIG_FAIL_SKB_REALLOC (no UAF). net/ipv4/af_inet.c | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 20 insertions(+) diff --git a/net/ipv4/af_inet.c b/net/ipv4/af_inet.c index 32d006c1a8ee..998ff77fd7b9 100644 --- a/net/ipv4/af_inet.c +++ b/net/ipv4/af_inet.c @@ -1470,6 +1470,7 @@ struct sk_buff *inet_gro_receive(struct list_head *head, struct sk_buff *skb) const struct net_offload *ops; struct sk_buff *pp = NULL; const struct iphdr *iph; + unsigned int tot_len; struct sk_buff *p; unsigned int hlen; unsigned int off; @@ -1498,6 +1499,25 @@ struct sk_buff *inet_gro_receive(struct list_head *head, struct sk_buff *skb) goto out; NAPI_GRO_CB(skb)->proto = proto; + + tot_len = ntohs(iph->tot_len); + if (unlikely(skb_gro_len(skb) > tot_len)) { + if (!skb_is_nonlinear(skb)) { + if (tot_len < sizeof(*iph) || + pskb_trim_rcsum(skb, off + tot_len)) + goto out; + + NAPI_GRO_CB(skb)->frag0 = skb->data; + NAPI_GRO_CB(skb)->frag0_len = skb->len; + iph = skb_gro_header(skb, hlen, off); + if (unlikely(!iph)) + goto out; + if (skb->ip_summed == CHECKSUM_COMPLETE) + NAPI_GRO_CB(skb)->csum = + skb_checksum(skb, off, tot_len, 0); + } + } + flush = (u16)((ntohl(*(__be32 *)iph) ^ skb_gro_len(skb)) | (ntohl(*(__be32 *)&iph->id) & ~IP_DF)); list_for_each_entry(p, head, list) { base-commit: 2fbade66245059c78daeaccfce13ecf499fffb51 -- 2.53.0-Meta