From: Joshua Hahn <joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@kernel.org>
Cc: "Liam R. Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@oracle.com>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>,
Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>, Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>,
Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>,
Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
kernel-team@meta.com
Subject: [PATCH] mm/mm_init: Pull CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES out of CONFIG_DEBUG_VM
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:44:52 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20251121204454.2090245-1-joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com> (raw)
Use-after-free and double-free bugs can be very difficult to track down.
The kernel is good at tracking these and preventing bad pages from being
used/created through simple checks gated behind "check_pages_enabled".
Currently, the only ways to enable this flag is by building with
CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, or as a side effect of other checks such as
init_on_{alloc, free}, page_poisoning, or debug_pagealloc among others.
These solutions are powerful, but may often be too coarse in balancing
the performance vs. safety that a user may want, particularly in
latency-sensitie production environments.
Introduce CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES, which sets is_check_pages_enabled
with no other side effects. Setting CONFIG_DEBUG_VM automatically
enables this as well as to have backwards compatibility.
Developed on top of 7f1dae318f81e508ef59835bc82bdf33e4cb1021 "mm: swap:
remove scan_swap_map_slots() references from comments" of mm-new.
Signed-off-by: Joshua Hahn <joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com>
---
mm/Kconfig.debug | 12 ++++++++++++
mm/internal.h | 2 +-
mm/mm_init.c | 8 ++++----
3 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/mm/Kconfig.debug b/mm/Kconfig.debug
index 32b65073d0cc..366abde25026 100644
--- a/mm/Kconfig.debug
+++ b/mm/Kconfig.debug
@@ -45,6 +45,18 @@ config DEBUG_PAGEALLOC_ENABLE_DEFAULT
Enable debug page memory allocations by default? This value
can be overridden by debug_pagealloc=off|on.
+config DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES
+ bool "Debug VM page allocation/free sanity checks"
+ depends on DEBUG_KERNEL
+ default y if DEBUG_VM
+ help
+ Enable sanity checking of pages after allocations / before freeing.
+ This adds checks to catch double-frees, use-after-frees, and other
+ sources of page corruption by inspecting page internals (flags,
+ mapcount/refcount, memcg_data, etc.).
+
+ This is automatically enabled if CONFIG_DEBUG_VM is set.
+
config SLUB_DEBUG
default y
bool "Enable SLUB debugging support" if EXPERT
diff --git a/mm/internal.h b/mm/internal.h
index 04c307ee33ae..b8decdfc0930 100644
--- a/mm/internal.h
+++ b/mm/internal.h
@@ -562,7 +562,7 @@ pmd_t *mm_find_pmd(struct mm_struct *mm, unsigned long address);
extern char * const zone_names[MAX_NR_ZONES];
/* perform sanity checks on struct pages being allocated or freed */
-DECLARE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, check_pages_enabled);
+DECLARE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES, check_pages_enabled);
extern int min_free_kbytes;
extern int defrag_mode;
diff --git a/mm/mm_init.c b/mm/mm_init.c
index c6812b4dbb2e..7f47b22864dd 100644
--- a/mm/mm_init.c
+++ b/mm/mm_init.c
@@ -2523,7 +2523,7 @@ static int __init early_init_on_free(char *buf)
}
early_param("init_on_free", early_init_on_free);
-DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, check_pages_enabled);
+DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES, check_pages_enabled);
/*
* Enable static keys related to various memory debugging and hardening options.
@@ -2588,10 +2588,10 @@ static void __init mem_debugging_and_hardening_init(void)
/*
* Any page debugging or hardening option also enables sanity checking
- * of struct pages being allocated or freed. With CONFIG_DEBUG_VM it's
- * enabled already.
+ * of struct pages being allocated or freed. With CONFIG_DEBUG_VM or
+ * CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES it's enabled already.
*/
- if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM) && want_check_pages)
+ if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_DEBUG_CHECK_PAGES) && want_check_pages)
static_branch_enable(&check_pages_enabled);
}
base-commit: 7f1dae318f81e508ef59835bc82bdf33e4cb1021
--
2.47.3
next reply other threads:[~2025-11-21 20:44 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2025-11-21 20:44 Joshua Hahn [this message]
2025-11-21 22:03 ` Vlastimil Babka
2025-11-21 23:20 ` Joshua Hahn
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