Re: [PATCH v5 1/4] mm/page_alloc: only free healthy pages in high-order has_hwpoisoned folio

[Zi Yan]

On Mon Jun 15, 2026 at 11:23 PM EDT, Jiaqi Yan wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2026 at 11:34 AM Zi Yan <ziy@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> On 8 Jun 2026, at 23:44, Miaohe Lin wrote:
>>
>> > On 2026/5/31 13:58, Jiaqi Yan wrote:
>> >> At the end of dissolve_free_hugetlb_folio(), a free HugeTLB folio
>> >> becomes non-HugeTLB, and it is released to buddy allocator
>> >> as a high-order folio, e.g. a folio that contains 262144 pages
>> >> if the folio was a 1G HugeTLB hugepage.
>> >>
>> >> This is problematic if the HugeTLB hugepage contained HWPoison
>> >> subpages. In that case, since buddy allocator does not check
>> >> HWPoison for non-zero-order folio, the raw HWPoison page can
>> >> be given out with its buddy page and be re-used by either
>> >> kernel or userspace.
>> >>
>> >> Memory failure recovery (MFR) in kernel does attempt to take
>> >> raw HWPoison page off buddy allocator after
>> >> dissolve_free_hugetlb_folio(). However, there is always a time
>> >> window between dissolve_free_hugetlb_folio() frees a HWPoison
>> >> high-order folio to buddy allocator and MFR takes HWPoison
>> >> raw page off buddy allocator.
>> >>
>> >> Another similar situation is when a transparent huge page (THP)
>> >> runs into memory failure but splitting failed. Such THP will
>> >> eventually be released to buddy allocator when owning userspace
>> >> processes are gone, but with certain subpages having HWPoison.
>> >>
>> >> One obvious way to avoid both problems is to add page sanity
>> >> checks in page allocate or free path. However, it is against
>> >> the past efforts to reduce sanity check overhead [1,2,3].
>> >>
>> >> Introduce free_has_hwpoisoned() to only free the healthy pages
>> >> and to exclude the HWPoison ones in the high-order folio.
>> >> The idea is to iterate through the sub-pages of the folio to
>> >> identify contiguous ranges of healthy pages.
>> >>
>> >> free_has_hwpoisoned() is added in free_pages_prepare() as
>> >> a shortcut and is only invoked if PG_has_hwpoisoned indicates
>> >> HWPoison page exists and after checks and preparations in
>> >> free_pages_prepare() all succeeded. free_has_hwpoisoned() then
>> >> can re-use free_prepared_contig_range() [4] to decompose healthy
>> >> ranges into the largest possible chunks of different orders.
>> >> Every chunk meets the requirements to be freed via free_one_page().
>> >>
>> >> free_has_hwpoisoned() has linear time complexity wrt the number
>> >> of pages in the folio. While the power-of-two decomposition
>> >> ensures that the number of calls to the buddy allocator is
>> >> logarithmic for each contiguous healthy range, the mandatory
>> >> linear scan of pages to identify PageHWPoison() defines the
>> >> overall time complexity. For a 1G hugepage having 8 HWPoison
>> >> pages, free_has_hwpoisoned() takes around 1ms on average on
>> >> a system having 56 Intel Skylake physical cores. This is
>> >> 15x to the case of freeing no HWPoison page. The cost is far
>> >> from triggering soft lockup, and fair for handling exceptional
>> >> hardware memory errors.
>> >>
>> >> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/1460711275-1130-15-git-send-email-mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> [2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/1460711275-1130-16-git-send-email-mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> [3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230216095131.17336-1-vbabka@xxxxxxx
>> >> [4] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260401101634.2868165-2-usama.anjum@xxxxxxx
>> >>
>> >> Signed-off-by: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> >
>> > Thanks for your update. This patch looks good to me while some comments below.
>> >
>> >> ---
>> >>  mm/page_alloc.c | 85 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>> >>  1 file changed, 85 insertions(+)
>> >>
>> >> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
>> >> index e47679e7a9db..03df929abca6 100644
>> >> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
>> >> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
>> >> @@ -208,6 +208,7 @@ gfp_t gfp_allowed_mask __read_mostly = GFP_BOOT_MASK;
>> >>  unsigned int pageblock_order __read_mostly;
>> >>  #endif
>> >>
>> >> +static void free_has_hwpoisoned(struct page *page, unsigned int order);
>> >>  static void __free_pages_ok(struct page *page, unsigned int order,
>> >>                          fpi_t fpi_flags);
>> >>  static void reserve_highatomic_pageblock(struct page *page, int order,
>> >> @@ -1309,6 +1310,14 @@ static inline void pgalloc_tag_sub_pages(struct alloc_tag *tag, unsigned int nr)
>> >>
>> >>  #endif /* CONFIG_MEM_ALLOC_PROFILING */
>> >>
>> >> +/*
>> >> + * Returns
>> >> + * - true: checks and preparations all good, caller can proceed freeing.
>> >> + * - false: do not proceed freeing for one of the following reasons:
>> >> + *   1. Some check failed so it is not safe to proceed freeing.
>> >> + *   2. A compound page has some HWPoison pages. The healthy pages
>> >> + *      are already safely freed, and the HWPoison ones isolated.
>> >> + */
>> >>  static __always_inline bool __free_pages_prepare(struct page *page,
>> >>              unsigned int order, fpi_t fpi_flags)
>> >>  {
>> >> @@ -1317,6 +1326,15 @@ static __always_inline bool __free_pages_prepare(struct page *page,
>> >>      bool init = want_init_on_free();
>> >>      bool compound = PageCompound(page);
>> >>      struct folio *folio = page_folio(page);
>> >> +    /*
>> >> +     * When dealing with compound page, PG_has_hwpoisoned is cleared
>> >> +     * with PAGE_FLAGS_SECOND. So the check must be done first.
>> >> +     *
>> >> +     * Note we can't exclude PG_has_hwpoisoned from PAGE_FLAGS_SECOND.
>> >> +     * Because PG_has_hwpoisoned == PG_active, free_page_is_bad() will
>> >> +     * confuse and complaint that the first tail page is still active.
>> >> +     */
>> >> +    bool should_fhh = compound && folio_test_has_hwpoisoned(folio);
>> >>
>> >>      if (fpi_flags & FPI_PREPARED)
>> >>              return true;
>> >> @@ -1443,6 +1461,16 @@ static __always_inline bool __free_pages_prepare(struct page *page,
>> >>
>> >>      debug_pagealloc_unmap_pages(page, 1 << order);
>> >>
>> >> +    /*
>> >> +     * After breaking down compound page and dealing with page metadata
>> >> +     * (e.g. page owner and page alloc tags), take a shortcut if this
>> >> +     * was a compound page containing certain HWPoison subpages.
>> >> +     */
>> >> +    if (should_fhh) {
>> >> +            free_has_hwpoisoned(page, order);
>> >> +            return false;
>> >> +    }
>> >
>> > When the code reaches here, the hwpoisoned pages have passed through kernel_poison_pages,
>> > kasan_poison_pages, kernel_init_pages, arch_free_page... These functions might write to
>> > the hwpoisoned pages. Is it safe to do so?
>>
>> At least, kernel_poison_pages() writes to the page. It probably should be
>> moved up, somewhere like above kernel_poison_pages().
>
> Writing to HWPoison pages (location having memory error) is usually
> safe, as in it doesn't cause a machine check exception. Memory
> controller usually just fails the write op and waits for the next read
> to raise the MCE / exception for prevent silent data corruption.
>
>>
>> I do not like the shortcut method, since the pages are freed in
>> __free_pages_prepare(). This causes confusion. One alternative I can think
>
> What exactly is the confusion? or why does freeing has to be done by
> __free_pages_prepare()'s caller?
>
> Harry suggested the shortcut method [1]. Although freeing inline might
> surprise the caller, it simplifies things for all callers.
>
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/aVy7L-3pc4JUYBEn@hyeyoo

The function name is __free_pages_prepare(), but the code ends up with
freeing the pages if the folio has HWPoison.

>
>> of is to make __free_pages_prepare() returns a enum
>> { FREE_PAGE_PREPARE_SUCCESS, FREE_PAGE_PREPARE_FAIL, FREE_PAGE_PREPARE_HAS_HWPOISON}
>> and handle the return value in the caller.
>
> Are you worried that a caller of __free_pages_prepare() may see false
> returned in the has_hwpoison case, but mistakenly propagate some kind
> of error, or doing something under the assumption that folio not
> freed? In this case the three enums can be useful. But I checked
> current callers of __free_pages_prepare() and they don't have the
> above problem.

Right. Looking at compaction_free() code, if dst gets has_hwpoison (not
possible now, but if in the future migration code decides to mark folios
when copy fails with EHWPOISON), the next list_add() is going to cause
trouble. Or you can rename the function to
__free_pages_prepare_and_free_has_hwpoison()? At least, caller knows the
potential side effect.

-- 
Best Regards,
Yan, Zi