[PATCH v7 6/6] Documentation: document panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl

[Breno Leitao]

Add documentation for the new vm.panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
sysctl, describing which failures trigger a panic (kernel-owned pages
the handler cannot recover) and which are intentionally left out
(transient allocator races and unclassified pages).

Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst | 80 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 80 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
index 97e12359775c9..452c2ab25b35e 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
 - page-cluster
 - page_lock_unfairness
 - panic_on_oom
+- panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
 - percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
 - stat_interval
 - stat_refresh
@@ -925,6 +926,85 @@ panic_on_oom=2+kdump gives you very strong tool to investigate
 why oom happens. You can get snapshot.
 
 
+panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
+======================================
+
+When a hardware memory error (e.g. multi-bit ECC) hits a kernel page
+that cannot be recovered by the memory failure handler, the default
+behaviour is to ignore the error and continue operation.  This is
+dangerous because the corrupted data remains accessible to the kernel,
+risking silent data corruption or a delayed crash when the poisoned
+memory is next accessed.
+
+When enabled, this sysctl triggers a panic on memory failure events
+hitting reserved (``PageReserved``) memory: firmware reservations,
+the kernel image, vDSO, the zero page, and similar memblock-reserved
+regions.  These are owned by the kernel, are not managed by the page
+allocator, and cannot be recovered by the memory failure handler.
+
+Other unrecoverable kernel-owned populations (slab, vmalloc, page
+tables, kernel stacks, ...) are not currently covered by this
+sysctl.  The handler cannot reliably distinguish them from a
+userspace folio temporarily off the LRU during migration or
+compaction, and the cost of a false-positive panic on a recoverable
+userspace page is too high.  Such pages still go through the
+standard MF_MSG_GET_HWPOISON path: ``PG_hwpoison`` is set on them
+and a delayed crash on the next access remains possible.  Coverage
+may grow in the future as the handler gains stronger
+kernel-ownership signals.
+
+Recoverable failure paths are also intentionally left out: in-flight
+buddy allocations and other transient races with the page allocator
+can reach the same diagnostic, and panicking on them would risk
+killing the box for a page destined for userspace where the standard
+SIGBUS recovery path applies.  Pages whose state could not be
+classified at all are not covered either, since an unknown state is
+not a sound basis for a panic decision.
+
+For many environments it is preferable to panic immediately with a clean
+crash dump that captures the original error context, rather than to
+continue and face a random crash later whose cause is difficult to
+diagnose.
+
+Use cases
+---------
+
+This option is most useful in environments where unattributed crashes
+are expensive to debug or where data integrity must take precedence
+over availability:
+
+* Large fleets, where multi-bit ECC errors on kernel pages are observed
+  regularly and post-mortem analysis of an unrelated downstream crash
+  (often seconds to minutes after the original error) consumes
+  significant engineering effort.
+
+* Systems configured with kdump, where panicking at the moment of the
+  hardware error produces a vmcore that still contains the faulting
+  address, the affected page state, and the originating MCE/GHES
+  record — context that is typically lost by the time a delayed crash
+  occurs.
+
+* High-availability clusters that rely on fast, deterministic node
+  failure for failover, and prefer an immediate panic over silent data
+  corruption propagating to replicas or persistent storage.
+
+* Kernel and platform developers reproducing hwpoison issues with
+  tools such as ``mce-inject`` or error-injection debugfs interfaces,
+  where panicking on the unrecoverable path makes regressions
+  immediately visible instead of surfacing as later, unrelated
+  failures.
+
+= =====================================================================
+0 Try to continue operation (default).
+1 Panic immediately.  If the ``panic`` sysctl is also non-zero then the
+  machine will be rebooted.
+= =====================================================================
+
+Example::
+
+     echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
+
+
 percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
 =============================
 

-- 
2.53.0-Meta