Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] mm, memcg: fix memory.peak reset clobbering other fds' watermark

From: Ridong Chen

Date: Sun Aug 09 2026 - 22:58:59 EST




On 8/8/2026 4:22 AM, Andrew Morton wrote:
On Fri, 7 Aug 2026 16:59:58 +0800 Ridong <ridong.chen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Two fixes for the per-fd memory.peak / memory.swap.peak handlers added in
c6f53ed8f213. Each open fd reads back max(its own value, the shared
local_watermark), and both bugs live in that scheme.

Thanks.

We're missing the preferred description of the worst-case
userspace-visible effects of the bug. It appears they're quite minor
so I'll assume this series is a post-7.2 thing.


Agreed, post-7.2 is fine and neither is stable material.

Worst case for both: a reader of memory.peak (or memory.swap.peak)
gets a value lower than the true peak, so a tool that sizes or bills a
cgroup by peak usage under-reports it.

- Patch 1 (reader side, take peaks_lock in peak_show): a reader that
races an unrelated reset briefly gets the low value. Transient.

- Patch 2 (writer side, peak_write reset): a reset on one fd stores
the current usage into the other watchers instead of the old
watermark, dragging every other fd's peak down.

I'll spell this out in both changelogs in v2.

Sashiko might have found a similar race on the writer side:
https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260807090000.1532495-1-ridong.chen@xxxxxxxxx

Yes, that's the writer side that patch 2 fixes;

--
Best regards
Ridong