[PATCH v3 3/3] Documentation: add documentation for MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED

From: Jiaqi Yan

Date: Tue Feb 03 2026 - 14:25:05 EST


Document its motivation, userspace API, behaviors, and limitations.

Reviewed-by: Jane Chu <jane.chu@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst | 1 +
.../userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst | 60 +++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 61 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
index 8a61ac4c1bf19..6d8d94028a6cd 100644
--- a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ Everything else
futex2
perf_ring_buffer
ntsync
+ mfd_mfr_policy

.. only:: subproject and html

diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..c5a25df39791a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==================================================
+Userspace Memory Failure Recovery Policy via memfd
+==================================================
+
+:Author:
+ Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@xxxxxxxxxx>
+
+
+Motivation
+==========
+
+When a userspace process is able to recover from memory failures (MF)
+caused by uncorrected memory error (UE) in the DIMM, especially when it is
+able to avoid consuming known UEs, keeping the memory page mapped and
+accessible is benifical to the owning process for a couple of reasons:
+
+- The memory pages affected by UE have a large smallest granularity, for
+ example 1G hugepage, but the actual corrupted amount of the page is only
+ several cachlines. Losing the entire hugepage of data is unacceptable to
+ the application.
+
+- In addition to keeping the data accessible, the application still wants
+ to access with a large page size for the fastest virtual-to-physical
+ translations.
+
+Memory failure recovery for 1G or larger HugeTLB is a good example. With
+memfd userspace process can control whether the kernel hard offlines its
+hugepages that backs the in-RAM file created by memfd.
+
+
+User API
+========
+
+``int memfd_create(const char *name, unsigned int flags)``
+
+``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``
+
+ When ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` bit is set in ``flags``, MF recovery
+ in the kernel does not hard offline memory due to UE until the
+ returned ``memfd`` is released. IOW, the HWPoison-ed memory remains
+ accessible via the returned ``memfd`` or the memory mapping created
+ with the returned ``memfd``. Note the affected memory will be
+ immediately isolated and prevented from future use once the memfd
+ is closed. By default ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` is not set, and
+ kernel hard offlines memory having UEs.
+
+Notes about the behavior and limitations
+
+- Even if the page affected by UE is kept, a portion of the (huge)page is
+ already lost due to hardware corruption, and the size of the portion
+ is the smallest page size that kernel uses to manages memory on the
+ architecture, i.e. PAGESIZE. Accessing a virtual address within any of
+ these parts results in a SIGBUS; accessing virtual address outside these
+ parts are good until it is corrupted by new memory error.
+
+- ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` currently only works for HugeTLB, so
+ ``MFD_HUGETLB`` must also be set when setting ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``.
+ Otherwise ``memfd_create`` returns EINVAL.
--
2.53.0.rc2.204.g2597b5adb4-goog