From: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@google.com>
To: linmiaohe@huawei.com, william.roche@oracle.com,
harry.yoo@oracle.com, jane.chu@oracle.com
Cc: nao.horiguchi@gmail.com, tony.luck@intel.com,
wangkefeng.wang@huawei.com, willy@infradead.org,
akpm@linux-foundation.org, osalvador@suse.de,
rientjes@google.com, duenwen@google.com, jthoughton@google.com,
jgg@nvidia.com, ankita@nvidia.com, peterx@redhat.com,
sidhartha.kumar@oracle.com, ziy@nvidia.com, david@redhat.com,
dave.hansen@linux.intel.com, muchun.song@linux.dev,
linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@google.com>
Subject: [PATCH v3 3/3] Documentation: add documentation for MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 2026 19:23:52 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260203192352.2674184-4-jiaqiyan@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260203192352.2674184-1-jiaqiyan@google.com>
Document its motivation, userspace API, behaviors, and limitations.
Reviewed-by: Jane Chu <jane.chu@oracle.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@google.com>
---
Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst | 1 +
.../userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst | 60 +++++++++++++++++++
2 files changed, 61 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
index 8a61ac4c1bf19..6d8d94028a6cd 100644
--- a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
@@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ Everything else
futex2
perf_ring_buffer
ntsync
+ mfd_mfr_policy
.. only:: subproject and html
diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..c5a25df39791a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==================================================
+Userspace Memory Failure Recovery Policy via memfd
+==================================================
+
+:Author:
+ Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@google.com>
+
+
+Motivation
+==========
+
+When a userspace process is able to recover from memory failures (MF)
+caused by uncorrected memory error (UE) in the DIMM, especially when it is
+able to avoid consuming known UEs, keeping the memory page mapped and
+accessible is benifical to the owning process for a couple of reasons:
+
+- The memory pages affected by UE have a large smallest granularity, for
+ example 1G hugepage, but the actual corrupted amount of the page is only
+ several cachlines. Losing the entire hugepage of data is unacceptable to
+ the application.
+
+- In addition to keeping the data accessible, the application still wants
+ to access with a large page size for the fastest virtual-to-physical
+ translations.
+
+Memory failure recovery for 1G or larger HugeTLB is a good example. With
+memfd userspace process can control whether the kernel hard offlines its
+hugepages that backs the in-RAM file created by memfd.
+
+
+User API
+========
+
+``int memfd_create(const char *name, unsigned int flags)``
+
+``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``
+
+ When ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` bit is set in ``flags``, MF recovery
+ in the kernel does not hard offline memory due to UE until the
+ returned ``memfd`` is released. IOW, the HWPoison-ed memory remains
+ accessible via the returned ``memfd`` or the memory mapping created
+ with the returned ``memfd``. Note the affected memory will be
+ immediately isolated and prevented from future use once the memfd
+ is closed. By default ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` is not set, and
+ kernel hard offlines memory having UEs.
+
+Notes about the behavior and limitations
+
+- Even if the page affected by UE is kept, a portion of the (huge)page is
+ already lost due to hardware corruption, and the size of the portion
+ is the smallest page size that kernel uses to manages memory on the
+ architecture, i.e. PAGESIZE. Accessing a virtual address within any of
+ these parts results in a SIGBUS; accessing virtual address outside these
+ parts are good until it is corrupted by new memory error.
+
+- ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` currently only works for HugeTLB, so
+ ``MFD_HUGETLB`` must also be set when setting ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``.
+ Otherwise ``memfd_create`` returns EINVAL.
--
2.53.0.rc2.204.g2597b5adb4-goog
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-02-03 19:24 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-02-03 19:23 [PATCH v3 0/3] memfd-based Userspace MFR Policy for HugeTLB Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-03 19:23 ` [PATCH v3 1/3] mm: memfd/hugetlb: introduce memfd-based userspace MFR policy Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-04 17:29 ` William Roche
2026-02-10 4:46 ` Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-09 11:54 ` Miaohe Lin
2026-02-10 4:47 ` Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-10 7:31 ` Miaohe Lin
2026-02-13 5:01 ` Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-03 19:23 ` [PATCH v3 2/3] selftests/mm: test userspace MFR for HugeTLB hugepage Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-04 17:53 ` William Roche
2026-02-12 3:11 ` Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-09 12:01 ` Miaohe Lin
2026-02-12 3:17 ` Jiaqi Yan
2026-02-03 19:23 ` Jiaqi Yan [this message]
2026-02-04 17:56 ` [PATCH v3 3/3] Documentation: add documentation for MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED William Roche
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