Re: [PATCH] mm: page_alloc: validate buddy before check its migratetype.

[Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1921 bytes --]

On 30 Mar 2022, at 19:03, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 30, 2022 at 3:12 PM Zi Yan <zi.yan@sent.com> wrote:
>>
>> Fixes: 1dd214b8f21c ("mm: page_alloc: avoid merging non-fallbackable pageblocks with others")
>
> Oh, btw - should this perhaps be backported further back than that
> alleged "fixes" commit?
>
> It does look like maybe the problem potentially existed before too,
> and was just much harder to trigger.
>
> That said, google doesn't find any other reports that look like
> Steven's oops, so maybe it really never happened and backporting isn't
> called for.
>
> Or possibly my google-fu is just bad.
>

There might not be any issue with the original code because this bug
could only be triggered when CONFIG_FLATMEM and CONFIG_MEMORY_ISOLATION
are both set, which never happens, since CONFIG_MEMORY_ISOLATION
depends on CONFIG_SPARSEMEM.

By checking Steven's boot log, it should be PFN 0x21ee00 that triggers
the bug, since the physical memory range ends at PFN 0x21edff.
PFN 0x21ee00 is 2MB aligned instead of MAX_ORDER-1 (4MB) aligned.
The original code assumes all physical memory ranges are at least
MAX_ORDER-1 aligned, which is true when CONFIG_SPARSEMEM is set
(CONFIG_MEMORY_ISOLATION depends on it), since CONFIG_SPARSEMEM
allocates pageblock_flags array (the NULL-deferenced bitmap points
to) at section size granularity (128MB > 4MB). However, CONFIG_FLATMEM
does not do this. It allocates pageblock_flags array at the exact size
of the physical memory. So checking 0x21ee00 will not cause NULL
dereferencing when CONFIG_MEMORY_ISOLATION is set and the original
if statement can be true.

Now I am wondering if the page_is_buddy() check is correct for
CONFIG_FLATMEM. Is mem_map allocation aligned to MAX_ORDER-1
or just the present physical memory range? Is PageBuddy(0x21ee00)
accessing some random memory location?

--
Best Regards,
Yan, Zi

[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 854 bytes --]