[PATCH mm-hotfixes] mm/rmap: clear vma->anon_vma on error

Lorenzo Stoakes (Oracle)
2026-03-18T12:26:44Z

Commit 542eda1a8329 ("mm/rmap: improve anon_vma_clone(), unlink_anon_vmas()
comments, add asserts") alters the way errors are handled, but overlooked
one important aspect of clean up.

When a VMA encounters an error state in anon_vma_clone() (that is, on
attempted allocation of anon_vma_chain objects), it cleans up partially
established state in cleanup_partial_anon_vmas(), before returning an
error.

However, this occurs prior to anon_vma->num_active_vmas being incremented,
and it also fails to clear the VMA's vma->anon_vma field, which remains in
place.

This is immediately an inconsistent state, because
anon_vma->num_active_vmas is supposed to track the number of VMAs whose
vma->anon_vma field references that anon_vma, and now that count is
off-by-negative-1 for each VMA for which this error state has occurred.

When VMAs are unlinked from this anon_vma, unlink_anon_vmas() will
eventually underflow anon_vma->num_active_vmas, which will trigger a
warning.

This will always eventually happen, as we unlink anon_vma's at process
teardown.

It could also cause maybe_reuse_anon_vma() to incorrectly permit the reuse
of an anon_vma which has active VMAs attached, which will lead to a
persistently invalid state.

The solution is to clear the VMA's anon_vma field when we clean up partial
state, as the fact we are doing so indicates clearly that the VMA is not
correctly integrated into the anon_vma tree and thus this field is invalid.

Reported-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20260302151547.2389070-1-sashal@kernel.org/
Reported-by: Jiakai Xu <jiakaipeanut@gmail.com>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CAFb8wJvRhatRD-9DVmr5v5pixTMPEr3UKjYBJjCd09OfH55CKg@mail.gmail.com/
Fixes: 542eda1a8329 ("mm/rmap: improve anon_vma_clone(), unlink_anon_vmas() comments, add asserts")
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (Oracle) <ljs@kernel.org>
---
mm/rmap.c | 7 +++++++
1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)

diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c
index 6398d7eef393..abe4712a220c 100644
--- a/mm/rmap.c
+++ b/mm/rmap.c
@@ -457,6 +457,13 @@ static void cleanup_partial_anon_vmas(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
list_del(&avc->same_vma);
anon_vma_chain_free(avc);
}
+
+ /*
+ * The anon_vma assigned to this VMA is no longer valid, as we were not
+ * able to correctly clone AVC state. Avoid inconsistent anon_vma tree
+ * state by resetting.
+ */
+ vma->anon_vma = NULL;
}

/**
--
2.53.0