Re: [PATCH v2] mm: vmalloc: fix vmap_purge_lock livelock under memory pressure

[Dev Jain]

On 28/08/26 11:35 pm, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Aug 2026 17:17:53 +0800 Ye Liu <ye.liu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> From: Ye Liu <liuye@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> The vmap_purge_lock mutex can be held for an extended period by
>> __purge_vmap_area_lazy() which calls flush_work() to wait for
>> purge_vmap_node workers while holding the lock.  Under memory
>> pressure, those workers may themselves be blocked in direct
>> reclaim trying to acquire the same lock via the
>> vmap_node_shrink_scan() shrinker callback, creating a circular
>> dependency that deadlocks the entire system.
>>
>> Two places acquire vmap_purge_lock from paths that can be reached
>> during direct reclaim:
>>
>> 1. vmap_node_shrink_scan(): replace blocking guard(mutex) with
>>    mutex_trylock().  This is a shrinker that only decays the vmap
>>    pool and returns SHRINK_STOP without freeing memory; skipping a
>>    decay cycle when the lock is contended is harmless and prevents
>>    tasks from piling up on the mutex in the direct reclaim path.
>>
>> 2. reclaim_and_purge_vmap_areas(): replace mutex_lock() with
>>    mutex_trylock().  This is called from the vmalloc allocation
>>    overflow path; if trylock fails, another thread is already
>>    purging and the allocator's retry will find freed space.  The
>>    notifier chain provides a fallback if the retry still fails.
>>
>> Both trylock failures break the circular dependency: the lock
>> holder's flush_work() can complete because workers are no longer
>> blocked on vmap_purge_lock in the direct reclaim path.
> 
> Thanks.  AI review expressed a couple of concerns:
> 	https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260828091753.299295-1-ye.liu@xxxxxxxxx


Sounds legit to me. Now there is no guarantee of purge being successful, and we
can get a spurious failure.

How about using a WQ_RECLAIM workqueue:

vmap_purge_wq = alloc_workqueue("vmap_purge",
				WQ_MEM_RECLAIM | WQ_PERCPU, 0);

I see the same pattern in __lru_add_drain_all() and kmem_cache_init_late().