Thread (14 messages) 14 messages, 4 authors, 7d ago

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

From: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>
Date: 2026-07-06 12:22:18
Also in: linux-doc, linux-kselftest, linux-mm, lkml

On 2026/6/30 20:46, Breno Leitao wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
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 | 52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 50 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/mm/memory-failure.c b/mm/memory-failure.c
index f4d3e6e20e13f..087658484e242 100644
--- a/mm/memory-failure.c
+++ b/mm/memory-failure.c
@@ -1325,6 +1325,38 @@ 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 residual free->alloc->free cannot be closed here
+	 * (frozen slab and large-kmalloc pages cannot be pinned), but is
+	 * harmless: where a wrong verdict could panic, memory_failure() has
+	 * already set PageHWPoison, which bars the page from the allocator.
+	 */
+retry:
+	head = compound_head(page);
It's irrelevant to this issue but should we use folio?
Anyway, this patch looks good to me.

Acked-by: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>

Thanks.
.
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