[PATCH v3.1] sched/isolation: Defer freeing of cpumask memblock memory to initcall

From: Waiman Long

Date: Thu Jun 04 2026 - 14:29:12 EST


When testing a linux-next kernel with commit 59bd1d914bb5 ("memblock:
warn when freeing reserved memory before memory map is initialized"),
the following warning was hit when there was a "nohz_full" kernel boot
parameter.

Cannot free reserved memory because of deferred initialization of the memory map
WARNING: mm/memblock.c:904 at __free_reserved_area+0xde/0xf0, CPU#0: swapper/0/0
:
Call Trace:
<TASK>
memblock_phys_free+0xcb/0x100
housekeeping_init+0x14c/0x170
start_kernel+0x207/0x450
x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x30
x86_64_start_kernel+0xda/0xe0
common_startup_64+0x13e/0x141
</TASK>

IOW, we shouldn't free memblock allocated memory so early
in the boot process when memory map isn't fully initialized in
deferred_init_memmap().

Fix it by saving the housekeeping cpumask memblock memory to
be freed into a free list in housekeeping_init() and add a new
housekeeping_late_init() helper to defer the actual freeing of memblock
memory to when initcall's are being processed. The non-atomic version
of the llist APIs are used as there is no contention.

This commit also depends on the presence of commit 7c2eee9c1367
("memblock: don't touch memblock arrays when memblock_free() is called
late") to prevent a KASAN UAF bug report [1].

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20260505051821.1107133-1-longman@xxxxxxxxxx/

Fixes: 27c3a5967f05 ("sched/isolation: Convert housekeeping cpumasks to rcu pointers")
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/sched/isolation.c | 16 +++++++++++++++-
1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

[v3.1] Add __initdata to memblock_freelist

diff --git a/kernel/sched/isolation.c b/kernel/sched/isolation.c
index ef152d401fe2..156025ef81b7 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/isolation.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/isolation.c
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@
*
*/
#include <linux/sched/isolation.h>
+#include <linux/llist.h>
#include <linux/pci.h>
#include "sched.h"

@@ -27,6 +28,7 @@ struct housekeeping {
};

static struct housekeeping housekeeping;
+static __initdata LLIST_HEAD(memblock_freelist);

bool housekeeping_enabled(enum hk_type type)
{
@@ -189,10 +191,22 @@ void __init housekeeping_init(void)
WARN_ON_ONCE(cpumask_empty(omask));
cpumask_copy(nmask, omask);
RCU_INIT_POINTER(housekeeping.cpumasks[type], nmask);
- memblock_free(omask, cpumask_size());
+ __llist_add((struct llist_node *)omask, &memblock_freelist);
}
}

+static int __init housekeeping_late_init(void)
+{
+ struct llist_node *llnode, *pos, *t;
+
+ /* Free allocated memblock memory, if any */
+ llnode = __llist_del_all(&memblock_freelist);
+ llist_for_each_safe(pos, t, llnode)
+ memblock_free(pos, cpumask_size());
+ return 0;
+}
+pure_initcall(housekeeping_late_init);
+
static void __init housekeeping_setup_type(enum hk_type type,
cpumask_var_t housekeeping_staging)
{
--
2.54.0