The select(2) syscall performs a kmalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL) where size grows
with the number of fds passed. We had a customer report page allocation
failures of order-4 for this allocation. This is a costly order, so it might
easily fail, as the VM expects such allocation to have a lower-order fallback.

Such trivial fallback is vmalloc(), as the memory doesn't have to be
physically contiguous. Also the allocation is temporary for the duration of the
syscall, so it's unlikely to stress vmalloc too much.

Note that the poll(2) syscall seems to use a linked list of order-0 pages, so
it doesn't need this kind of fallback.

...

--- a/fs/select.c
+++ b/fs/select.c

@@ -29,6 +29,7 @@
 #include <linux/sched/rt.h>
 #include <linux/freezer.h>
 #include <net/busy_poll.h>
+#include <linux/vmalloc.h>
 
 #include <asm/uaccess.h>
 

@@ -558,6 +559,7 @@ int core_sys_select(int n, fd_set __user *inp, fd_set __user *outp,
 	struct fdtable *fdt;
 	/* Allocate small arguments on the stack to save memory and be faster */
 	long stack_fds[SELECT_STACK_ALLOC/sizeof(long)];
+	unsigned long alloc_size;
 
 	ret = -EINVAL;
 	if (n < 0)

@@ -580,8 +582,12 @@ int core_sys_select(int n, fd_set __user *inp, fd_set __user *outp,
 	bits = stack_fds;
 	if (size > sizeof(stack_fds) / 6) {
 		/* Not enough space in on-stack array; must use kmalloc */
+		alloc_size = 6 * size;

 		if (!bits)
 			goto out_nofds;
 	}

@@ -618,7 +624,7 @@ int core_sys_select(int n, fd_set __user *inp, fd_set __user *outp,
 
 out:
 	if (bits != stack_fds)
-		kfree(bits);
+		kvfree(bits);
 out_nofds:
 	return ret;