[PATCH] mm: don't defer freeing kernel page tables while booting
From: Mikhail Gavrilov
Date: Thu Sep 24 2026 - 02:43:42 EST
Booting with a boot-time function tracer and a filter, for example
ftrace=function ftrace_filter=pud_free_pmd_page
panics on 7.3-rc4 as soon as the tracer starts:
[ 23.531178] Starting tracer 'function'
[ 23.675800] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000038: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI
[ 23.819917] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000001c0-0x00000000000001c7]
[ 23.964025] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 7.3.0-rc4-fe2ec83746e5-with-fixes-v2+ #195 PREEMPT(undef)
[ 24.252248] RIP: 0010:__queue_work+0xab/0xf00
[ 25.981629] Call Trace:
[ 26.125727] <TASK>
[ 26.413912] ? pagetable_free_kernel+0x20/0x120
[ 26.990283] queue_work_on+0x97/0xf0
[ 27.134382] __cpa_collapse_large_pages+0x501/0x6f0
[ 27.566662] cpa_flush+0x394/0x620
[ 27.998953] change_page_attr_set_clr+0x321/0x4a0
[ 29.151729] set_memory_rox+0xa2/0xf0
[ 29.584018] create_trampoline+0x431/0x6f0
...
[ 44.343347] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!
The boot-time tracer is started from early_trace_init(), which runs
before workqueue_init_early(). Making its trampoline read-only splits a
large page, and CPA collapses it again right away. The split table has
been a kernel page table since commit 9e4a3ec3411b
("x86/mm/pat: Allocate split page tables as kernel page tables"), so the
collapse frees it through pagetable_free_kernel(), which queues work on
system_percpu_wq - still NULL at that point.
The deferral exists so that IOMMUs using SVA can have their paging
structure caches flushed before a kernel page table is freed. While
system_state is still SYSTEM_BOOTING only the boot CPU runs and no IOMMU
has been initialised yet (on x86 that happens from pci_iommu_init(), a
rootfs_initcall), so there is nothing to flush. Free the table directly
in that case.
Fixes: 9e4a3ec3411b ("x86/mm/pat: Allocate split page tables as kernel page tables")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Mikhail Gavrilov <mikhail.v.gavrilov@xxxxxxxxx>
---
#regzbot introduced: 9e4a3ec3411b
Tested on a Ryzen 9 7950X with a Radeon RX 7900 XTX, lockdep and KASAN
enabled, booting with the command line above plus earlycon=efifb so
that the oops is visible:
7.3-rc4 (fe2ec83746e5) panics as quoted
+ revert of 9e4a3ec3411b boots
+ this patch, 9e4a3ec3411b kept boots
With this patch the boot-time tracer works as intended and records
pud_free_pmd_page() being called from vmap_p4d_range() during boot.
All three kernels also carry my pud_free_pmd_page() v2 patch and
unrelated local changes elsewhere (HID, sound/usb, Bluetooth, debugfs);
none of them is on this path.
9e4a3ec3411b is also in 7.2.7 and 6.18.53, together with the deferred
pagetable_free_kernel(); I have not tried those.
mm/pgtable-generic.c | 11 +++++++++++
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)
diff --git a/mm/pgtable-generic.c b/mm/pgtable-generic.c
index b91b1a98029c..2d9b4ba33b46 100644
--- a/mm/pgtable-generic.c
+++ b/mm/pgtable-generic.c
@@ -440,6 +440,17 @@ static void kernel_pgtable_work_func(struct work_struct *work)
void pagetable_free_kernel(struct ptdesc *pt)
{
+ /*
+ * While the system is still booting only the boot CPU runs and no
+ * IOMMU has been set up, so nothing can be caching this table and
+ * there is nothing to flush. The workqueue this defers to may not
+ * exist yet either.
+ */
+ if (system_state == SYSTEM_BOOTING) {
+ __pagetable_free(pt);
+ return;
+ }
+
spin_lock(&kernel_pgtable_work.lock);
list_add(&pt->pt_list, &kernel_pgtable_work.list);
spin_unlock(&kernel_pgtable_work.lock);
--
2.55.0