[PATCH] net/netfilter/x_tables.c: make allocation less aggressive

[Michal Hocko]

syzbot has noticed that xt_alloc_table_info can allocate a lot of
memory. This is an admin only interface but an admin in a namespace
is sufficient as well. eacd86ca3b03 ("net/netfilter/x_tables.c: use
kvmalloc() in xt_alloc_table_info()") has changed the opencoded
kmalloc->vmalloc fallback into kvmalloc. It has dropped __GFP_NORETRY on
the way because vmalloc has simply never fully supported __GFP_NORETRY
semantic. This is still the case because e.g. page tables backing the
vmalloc area are hardcoded GFP_KERNEL.

Revert back to __GFP_NORETRY as a poors man defence against excessively
large allocation request here. We will not rule out the OOM killer
completely but __GFP_NORETRY should at least stop the large request
in most cases.

Fixes: eacd86ca3b03 ("net/netfilter/x_tables.c: use kvmalloc() in xt_alloc_table_info()")
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
---
 net/netfilter/x_tables.c | 8 +++++++-
 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/net/netfilter/x_tables.c b/net/netfilter/x_tables.c
index d8571f414208..a5f5c29bcbdc 100644
--- a/net/netfilter/x_tables.c
+++ b/net/netfilter/x_tables.c
@@ -1003,7 +1003,13 @@ struct xt_table_info *xt_alloc_table_info(unsigned int size)
 	if ((SMP_ALIGN(size) >> PAGE_SHIFT) + 2 > totalram_pages)
 		return NULL;
 
-	info = kvmalloc(sz, GFP_KERNEL);
+	/*
+	 * __GFP_NORETRY is not fully supported by kvmalloc but it should
+	 * work reasonably well if sz is too large and bail out rather
+	 * than shoot all processes down before realizing there is nothing
+	 * more to reclaim.
+	 */
+	info = kvmalloc(sz, GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_NORETRY);
 	if (!info)
 		return NULL;
 
-- 
2.15.1

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs