Re: [PATCH 0/2] introduce pagetable_alloc_nolock()
From: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Date: 2025-12-16 15:11:21
Also in:
bpf, linux-mm, linux-rt-devel, lkml
On 12/12/2025 16:18, Yeoreum Yun wrote:
Some architectures invoke pagetable_alloc() or __get_free_pages() with preemption disabled. For example, in arm64, linear_map_split_to_ptes() calls pagetable_alloc() while spliting block entry to ptes and __kpti_install_ng_mappings() calls __get_free_pages() to create kpti pagetable. Under PREEMPT_RT, calling pagetable_alloc() with preemption disabled is not allowed, because it may acquire a spin lock that becomes sleepable on RT, potentially causing a sleep during page allocation. Since above two functions is called as callback of stop_machine() where its callback is called in preemption disabled, They could make a potential problem. (sleeping in preemption disabled). To address this, introduce pagetable_alloc_nolock() API.
I don't really understand what the problem is that you're trying to fix. As I see it, there are 2 call sites in arm64 arch code that are calling into the page allocator from stop_machine() - one via via pagetable_alloc() and another via __get_free_pages(). But both of those calls are passing in GFP_ATOMIC. It was my understanding that the page allocator would ensure it never sleeps when GFP_ATOMIC is passed in, (even for PREEMPT_RT)? What is the actual symptom you are seeing? If the page allocator is somehow ignoring the GFP_ATOMIC request for PREEMPT_RT, then isn't that a bug in the page allocator? I'm not sure why you would change the callsites? Can't you just change the page allocator based on GFP_ATOMIC? Thanks, Ryan
Yeoreum Yun (2):
mm: introduce pagetable_alloc_nolock()
arm64: mmu: use pagetable_alloc_nolock() while stop_machine()
arch/arm64/mm/mmu.c | 23 ++++++++++++++++++-----
include/linux/mm.h | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
kernel/bpf/stream.c | 2 +-
kernel/bpf/syscall.c | 2 +-
mm/page_alloc.c | 10 +++-------
5 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)
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