Hi, We are hitting NULL pointer dereferences while running stress tests with KVM. See splat [0]. The test is to spawn 100 VMs all doing standard debian installation (Thanks to Marc's automated scripts, available here [1] ). The problem has been reproduced with a better rate of success from 5.1-rc6 onwards. The issue is only reproducible with swapping enabled and the entire memory is used up, when swapping heavily. Also this issue is only reproducible on only one server with 128GB, which has the following memory layout: [32GB@4GB, hole , 96GB@544GB] Here is my non-expert analysis of the issue so far. Under extreme memory pressure, the kswapd could trigger reset_isolation_suitable() to figure out the cached values for migrate/free pfn for a zone, by scanning through the entire zone. On our server it does so in the range of [ 0x10_0000, 0xa00_0000 ], with the following area of holes : [ 0x20_0000, 0x880_0000 ]. In the failing case, we end up setting the cached migrate pfn as : 0x508_0000, which is right in the center of the zone pfn range. i.e ( 0x10_0000 + 0xa00_0000 ) / 2, with reset_migrate = 0x88_4e00, reset_free = 0x10_0000. Now these cached values are used by the fast_isolate_freepages() to find a pfn. However, since we cant find anything during the search we fall back to using the page belonging to the min_pfn (which is the migrate_pfn), without proper checks to see if that is valid PFN or not. This is then passed on to fast_isolate_around() which tries to do : set_pageblock_skip(page) on the page which blows up due to an NULL mem_section pointer. The following patch seems to fix the issue for me, but I am not quite convinced that it is the right fix. Thoughts ? diff --git a/mm/compaction.c b/mm/compaction.c index 9febc8c..9e1b9ac 100644 --- a/mm/compaction.c +++ b/mm/compaction.c @@ -1399,7 +1399,7 @@ fast_isolate_freepages(struct compact_control *cc) page = pfn_to_page(highest); cc->free_pfn = highest; } else { - if (cc->direct_compaction) { + if (cc->direct_compaction && pfn_valid(min_pfn)) { page = pfn_to_page(min_pfn); cc->free_pfn = min_pfn; } Suzuki [ 0 ] Kernel splat Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000008 [47/1825] Mem abort info: ESR = 0x96000004 Exception class = DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits SET = 0, FnV = 0 EA = 0, S1PTW = 0 Data abort info: ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000004 CM = 0, WnR = 0 user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp = 0000000082f94ae9 [0000000000000008] pgd=0000000000000000 Internal error: Oops: 96000004 [#1] SMP ... CPU: 10 PID: 6080 Comm: qemu-system-aar Not tainted 510-rc1+ #6 Hardware name: AmpereComputing(R) OSPREY EV-883832-X3-0001/OSPREY, BIOS 4819 09/25/2018 pstate: 60000005 (nZCv daif -PAN -UAO) pc : set_pfnblock_flags_mask+0x58/0xe8 lr : compaction_alloc+0x300/0x950 sp : ffff00001fc03010 x29: ffff00001fc03010 x28: 0000000000000000 x27: 0000000000000000 x26: ffff000010bf7000 x25: 0000000006445000 x24: 0000000006444e00 x23: ffff7e018f138000 x22: 0000000000000003 x21: 0000000000000001 x20: 0000000006444e00 x19: 0000000000000001 x18: 0000000000000000 x17: 0000000000000000 x16: ffff809f7fe97268 x15: 0000000191138000 x14: 0000000000000000 x13: 0000000000000070 x12: 0000000000000000 x11: ffff00001fc03108 x10: 0000000000000000 x9 : 0000000009222400 x8 : 0000000000000187 x7 : 00000000063c4e00 x6 : 0000000006444e00 x5 : 0000000000080000 x4 : 0000000000000001 x3 : 0000000000000003 x2 : ffff809f7fe92840 x1 : 0000000000000220 x0 : 0000000000000000 Process qemu-system-aar (pid: 6080, stack limit = 0x0000000095070da5) Call trace: set_pfnblock_flags_mask+0x58/0xe8 compaction_alloc+0x300/0x950 migrate_pages+0x1a4/0xbb0 compact_zone+0x750/0xde8 compact_zone_order+0xd8/0x118 try_to_compact_pages+0xb4/0x290 __alloc_pages_direct_compact+0x84/0x1e0 __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x5e0/0xe18 alloc_pages_vma+0x1cc/0x210 do_huge_pmd_anonymous_page+0x108/0x7c8 __handle_mm_fault+0xdd4/0x1190 handle_mm_fault+0x114/0x1c0 __get_user_pages+0x198/0x3c0 get_user_pages_unlocked+0xb4/0x1d8 __gfn_to_pfn_memslot+0x12c/0x3b8 gfn_to_pfn_prot+0x4c/0x60 kvm_handle_guest_abort+0x4b0/0xcd8 handle_exit+0x140/0x1b8 kvm_arch_vcpu_ioctl_run+0x260/0x768 kvm_vcpu_ioctl+0x490/0x898 do_vfs_ioctl+0xc4/0x898 ksys_ioctl+0x8c/0xa0 __arm64_sys_ioctl+0x28/0x38 el0_svc_common+0x74/0x118 el0_svc_handler+0x38/0x78 el0_svc+0x8/0xc Code: f8607840 f100001f 8b011401 9a801020 (f9400400) ---[ end trace af6a35219325a9b6 ]--- [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/maz/vminstall.git/ _______________________________________________ kvmarm mailing list kvmarm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.cs.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/kvmarm