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
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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. .