Re: [PATCH] mm, page_alloc: Fix a division by zero error when boosting watermarks

[Will Deacon]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 01:19:23PM +0000, Mel Gorman wrote:
> Yury Norov reported that an arm64 KVM instance could not boot since after
> v5.0-rc1 and could addressed by reverting the patches
> 
> 1c30844d2dfe272d58c ("mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external
> 73444bc4d8f92e46a20 ("mm, page_alloc: do not wake kswapd with zone lock held")
> 
> The problem is that a division by zero error is possible if boosting occurs
> either very early in boot or if the high watermark is very small. This
> patch checks for the conditions and avoids boosting in those cases.
> 
> Fixes: 1c30844d2dfe ("mm: reclaim small amounts of memory when an external fragmentation event occurs")
> Reported-and-tested-by: Yury Norov <yury.norov@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  mm/page_alloc.c | 5 +++++
>  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index d295c9bc01a8..ae7e4ba5b9f5 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -2170,6 +2170,11 @@ static inline void boost_watermark(struct zone *zone)
>  
>  	max_boost = mult_frac(zone->_watermark[WMARK_HIGH],
>  			watermark_boost_factor, 10000);
> +
> +	/* high watermark be be uninitialised or very small */
> +	if (!max_boost)
> +		return;
> +
>  	max_boost = max(pageblock_nr_pages, max_boost);
>  
>  	zone->watermark_boost = min(zone->watermark_boost + pageblock_nr_pages,

I can confirm that this also allows my KVM guest to boot:

Tested-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@xxxxxxx>

Will