Thread (10 messages) 10 messages, 3 authors, 2026-06-29

[PATCH v10 2/6] mm/memory-failure: surface unhandlable kernel pages as -ENOTRECOVERABLE

flat view
STALE121d

From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Date: 2026-06-26 15:33:56
Also in: linux-doc, linux-kselftest, linux-mm, lkml
Subsystem: hwpoison memory failure handling, memory management, the rest · Maintainers: Miaohe Lin, Andrew Morton, Linus Torvalds

Revision v10 (10 revisions archived).

Revisions (10)
  1. v1
  2. v2 [diff against previous]
  3. v3 [diff against previous]
  4. v4 [diff against previous]
  5. v5 [diff against previous]
  6. v6 [diff against previous]
  7. v7 [diff against previous]
  8. v8 [diff against previous]
  9. v9 [diff against previous]
  10. v10 current [diff against previous] re-posted go to this post
get_any_page() collapses every HWPoisonHandlable() rejection into a
single -EIO via the __get_hwpoison_page() -> -EBUSY -> shake_page()
-> retry path.  That is correct for the transient case (a userspace
folio briefly off LRU during migration or compaction, which a later
shake can drag back), but wrong for stable kernel-owned pages: slab,
page-table, large-kmalloc and PG_reserved pages will never become
HWPoisonHandlable(), so the retry loop is wasted work and the final
-EIO loses the "this is structurally unrecoverable" information.
memory_failure() then maps -EIO into MF_MSG_GET_HWPOISON, which the
panic-on-unrecoverable sysctl deliberately does not act on.

Introduce is_kernel_owned_page(), a small predicate that positively
identifies pages the hwpoison handler cannot recover from:

  is_kernel_owned_page(p) :=
      PageReserved(p) ||
      PageSlab(head) || PageTable(head) || PageLargeKmalloc(head)

  where head = compound_head(p).

PG_reserved is a per-page flag (PF_NO_COMPOUND) and is tested on the
page directly.  The slab, page-table and large-kmalloc page-type bits
are only stored on the head page, so those tests resolve the compound
head first, then re-read compound_head(page) afterwards: a concurrent
split or compound free that moves head invalidates the just-read flags
and the loop retries.  The lookup still takes no refcount, mirroring
the rest of get_any_page(); the recheck closes the common split race,
and a residual free->alloc->free in the same window can only mis-tag
a genuinely poisoned page, never reclassify a handlable one.

No MF_SOFT_OFFLINE / page_has_movable_ops() opt-out is needed: a
movable_ops page is always PageOffline or PageZsmalloc, whose
page_type is mutually exclusive with slab, page-table and
large-kmalloc, and it never carries PG_reserved, so it can never
match any of the checks above.

The list is intentionally not exhaustive.  vmalloc and kernel-stack
pages, for example, do not carry a page_type bit and would need a
different oracle; they keep going through the existing retry path
unchanged.  This is the smallest set we can identify with certainty
by page type.

Wire the helper into the top of get_any_page() to short-circuit
those pages before the retry loop runs.  On a hit, drop the caller's
MF_COUNT_INCREASED reference (if any) and return -ENOTRECOVERABLE
straight away.  Pages outside the helper's positive list still take
the existing retry path and return -EIO, leaving operator-visible
behaviour for those cases unchanged.

Extend the unhandlable-page pr_err() to fire for either errno and
update the get_hwpoison_page() kerneldoc to document the new return.

memory_failure() still folds every negative return into
MF_MSG_GET_HWPOISON via its existing "else if (res < 0)" branch, so
this patch on its own only changes the errno that soft_offline_page()
can propagate to its callers.  A follow-up wires -ENOTRECOVERABLE
through memory_failure() and reports MF_MSG_KERNEL for the
unrecoverable cases, which is what the
panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl observes.

Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand <david@kernel.org>
Suggested-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
---
 mm/memory-failure.c | 50 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 48 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/mm/memory-failure.c b/mm/memory-failure.c
index f4d3e6e20e13f..d08fbd0d8c39f 100644
--- a/mm/memory-failure.c
+++ b/mm/memory-failure.c
@@ -1325,6 +1325,36 @@ static inline bool HWPoisonHandlable(struct page *page, unsigned long flags)
 	return PageLRU(page) || is_free_buddy_page(page);
 }
 
+/*
+ * Positive identification of pages the hwpoison handler cannot recover:
+ * pages owned by kernel internals with no userspace mapping to unmap, no
+ * file mapping to invalidate, and no migration target.
+ */
+static inline bool is_kernel_owned_page(struct page *page)
+{
+	struct page *head;
+	bool kernel_owned;
+
+	/* PG_reserved is a per-page flag, never set on a compound page. */
+	if (PageReserved(page))
+		return true;
+
+	/*
+	 * Page-type bits live only on the head page, so resolve any tail
+	 * first.  The check takes no refcount; recheck the head afterwards
+	 * so a concurrent split or compound free cannot leave us trusting
+	 * a stale view.  A free->alloc->free in the same window is still
+	 * possible but closing it would require taking a reference here.
+	 */
+retry:
+	head = compound_head(page);
+	kernel_owned = PageSlab(head) || PageTable(head) ||
+		       PageLargeKmalloc(head);
+	if (head != compound_head(page))
+		goto retry;
+	return kernel_owned;
+}
+
 static int __get_hwpoison_page(struct page *page, unsigned long flags)
 {
 	struct folio *folio = page_folio(page);
@@ -1371,6 +1401,19 @@ static int get_any_page(struct page *p, unsigned long flags)
 	if (flags & MF_COUNT_INCREASED)
 		count_increased = true;
 
+	/*
+	 * Page types we know are kernel-owned and cannot be recovered.
+	 * Short-circuit before the shake_page() / retry loop, which
+	 * cannot turn any of these into something HWPoisonHandlable().
+	 * Drop the caller's reference if MF_COUNT_INCREASED took one.
+	 */
+	if (is_kernel_owned_page(p)) {
+		if (count_increased)
+			put_page(p);
+		ret = -ENOTRECOVERABLE;
+		goto out;
+	}
+
 try_again:
 	if (!count_increased) {
 		ret = __get_hwpoison_page(p, flags);
@@ -1418,7 +1461,7 @@ static int get_any_page(struct page *p, unsigned long flags)
 		ret = -EIO;
 	}
 out:
-	if (ret == -EIO)
+	if (ret == -EIO || ret == -ENOTRECOVERABLE)
 		pr_err("%#lx: unhandlable page.\n", page_to_pfn(p));
 
 	return ret;
@@ -1475,7 +1518,10 @@ static int __get_unpoison_page(struct page *page)
  *         -EIO for pages on which we can not handle memory errors,
  *         -EBUSY when get_hwpoison_page() has raced with page lifecycle
  *         operations like allocation and free,
- *         -EHWPOISON when the page is hwpoisoned and taken off from buddy.
+ *         -EHWPOISON when the page is hwpoisoned and taken off from buddy,
+ *         -ENOTRECOVERABLE for kernel-owned pages identified by
+ *         is_kernel_owned_page() (PG_reserved, slab,
+ *         page-table, large-kmalloc) that the handler cannot recover.
  */
 static int get_hwpoison_page(struct page *p, unsigned long flags)
 {
-- 
2.53.0-Meta
Keyboard shortcuts
hback out one level
jnext message in thread
kprevious message in thread
ldrill in
Escclose help / fold thread tree
?toggle this help