This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled net: phylink: move phy_device_free() to correctly release phy device to the 6.1-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: net-phylink-move-phy_device_free-to-correctly-releas.patch and it can be found in the queue-6.1 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. commit 0265be99d995f9fb298e80b0f7d15f4c79d5f369 Author: Clément Léger <clement.leger@xxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Tue Jan 31 11:02:42 2023 +0100 net: phylink: move phy_device_free() to correctly release phy device [ Upstream commit ce93fdb5f2ca5c9e2a9668411cc39091507f8dc9 ] After calling fwnode_phy_find_device(), the phy device refcount is incremented. Then, when the phy device is attached to a netdev with phy_attach_direct(), the refcount is also incremented but only decremented in the caller if phy_attach_direct() fails. Move phy_device_free() before the "if" to always release it correctly. Indeed, either phy_attach_direct() failed and we don't want to keep a reference to the phydev or it succeeded and a reference has been taken internally. Fixes: 25396f680dd6 ("net: phylink: introduce phylink_fwnode_phy_connect()") Signed-off-by: Clément Léger <clement.leger@xxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx> diff --git a/drivers/net/phy/phylink.c b/drivers/net/phy/phylink.c index 2805b04d64028..a202ce6611fde 100644 --- a/drivers/net/phy/phylink.c +++ b/drivers/net/phy/phylink.c @@ -1793,10 +1793,9 @@ int phylink_fwnode_phy_connect(struct phylink *pl, ret = phy_attach_direct(pl->netdev, phy_dev, flags, pl->link_interface); - if (ret) { - phy_device_free(phy_dev); + phy_device_free(phy_dev); + if (ret) return ret; - } ret = phylink_bringup_phy(pl, phy_dev, pl->link_config.interface); if (ret)