On Tue, 18 Feb 2020, Michal Hocko wrote:

Anyway, I do not think it is expected that kmalloc_node just blows up
on those nodes. The page allocator simply falls back to the closest
node. Something for kmalloc maintainers I believe.

That is the case for an unconstrained allocation. kmalloc_node means that
you want memory from that node. And If there is no such node then it is an
error.

A short summary. kmalloc_node blows up when trying to allocate from a
memory less node.

Use kmalloc instead? And set a memory allocation policy?