[PATCH v8 28/37] virtio_balloon: disable indirect descriptors

[Michael S. Tsirkin]

Balloon submits at most 1-2 scatter-gather entries per buffer and
virtqueue sizes are 128+, so indirect descriptors are unnecessary.

Disabling them avoids a GFP_KERNEL allocation inside
virtqueue_add_sgs when VIRTIO_RING_F_INDIRECT_DESC is negotiated.
This allocation could trigger OOM reclaim while balloon_lock is
held, leading to a deadlock: OOM notifier -> leak_balloon ->
balloon_lock.

With single-buffer submissions (previous patch) and no indirect
descriptors, virtqueue_add never allocates memory.

Signed-off-by: Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@xxxxxxxxxx>
Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-6
---
 drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c | 8 ++++++++
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

diff --git a/drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c b/drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c
index 53b4a3984e7d..1fa1c7fa285f 100644
--- a/drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c
+++ b/drivers/virtio/virtio_balloon.c
@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@
  */
 
 #include <linux/virtio.h>
+#include <uapi/linux/virtio_ring.h>
 #include <linux/virtio_balloon.h>
 #include <linux/swap.h>
 #include <linux/workqueue.h>
@@ -1175,6 +1176,13 @@ static int virtballoon_validate(struct virtio_device *vdev)
 	else if (!virtio_has_feature(vdev, VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_PAGE_POISON))
 		__virtio_clear_bit(vdev, VIRTIO_BALLOON_F_REPORTING);
 
+	/*
+	 * Balloon submits 1-2 sg entries max per buffer, virtqueue
+	 * sizes are 128+.  Disable indirect descriptors to avoid
+	 * GFP_KERNEL allocation in virtqueue_add under balloon_lock,
+	 * which could deadlock via OOM -> oom_notify -> leak_balloon.
+	 */
+	__virtio_clear_bit(vdev, VIRTIO_RING_F_INDIRECT_DESC);
 	__virtio_clear_bit(vdev, VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM);
 	return 0;
 }
-- 
MST