Re: NULL pointer dereference when booting ppc64_guest_defconfig in QEMU on -next

Mathieu Desnoyers
2026-03-20T14:20:55Z

On 2026-03-20 09:31, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> On 2026-03-20 09:21, Harry Yoo (Oracle) wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 08:35:46AM -0400, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
>>> On 2026-03-20 00:17, Harry Yoo wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>>> [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/20260227153730.1556542-4-
>>>>> mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com/
>>>>
>>>> @Mathieu: In patch 1/3 description,
>>>>> Changes since v7:
>>>>> - Explicitly initialize the subsystem from start_kernel() right
>>>>>     after mm_core_init() so it is up and running before the
>>>>> creation of
>>>>>     the first mm at boot.
>>>>
>>>> But how does this work when someone calls mm_cpumask() on init_mm
>>>> early?
>>>> Looks like it will behave incorrectly because get_rss_stat_items_size()
>>>> returns zero?
>>>
>>> It doesn't work as expected at all. I missed that all users of
>>> mm_cpumask()
>>> end up relying on get_rss_stat_items_size(), which now calls
>>> percpu_counter_tree_items_size(), which depends on initialization from
>>> percpu_counter_tree_subsystem_init().
>>>
>>> If you add a call to percpu_counter_tree_subsystem_init in
>>> arch/powerpc/kernel/setup_arch() just before:

[...]

One thing we could do to catch this kind of init sequence issue
is to add a WARN_ON_ONCE in percpu_counter_tree_items_size:

size_t percpu_counter_tree_items_size(void)
{
if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!nr_cpus_order))
return 0;
return counter_config->nr_items * sizeof(struct percpu_counter_tree_level_item);
}

Thanks,

Mathieu

--
Mathieu Desnoyers
EfficiOS Inc.