While browsing through ChromeOS crash reports, I found one with an allocation failure that looked like this: chrome: page allocation failure: order:7, mode:0x40dc0(GFP_KERNEL|__GFP_COMP|__GFP_ZERO), nodemask=(null),cpuset=urgent,mems_allowed=0 CPU: 7 PID: 3295 Comm: chrome Not tainted 5.15.133-20574-g8044615ac35c #1 (HASH:1162 1) Hardware name: Google Lazor (rev3 - 8) with KB Backlight (DT) Call trace: dump_backtrace+0x0/0x1ec show_stack+0x20/0x2c dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x78 dump_stack+0x18/0x38 warn_alloc+0x104/0x174 __alloc_pages+0x5f0/0x6e4 kmalloc_order+0x44/0x98 kmalloc_order_trace+0x34/0x124 __kmalloc+0x228/0x36c __regset_get+0x68/0xcc regset_get_alloc+0x1c/0x28 elf_core_dump+0x3d8/0xd8c do_coredump+0xeb8/0x1378 get_signal+0x14c/0x804 ... An order 7 allocation is (1 << 7) contiguous pages, or 512K. It's not a surprise that this allocation failed on a system that's been running for a while. In this case we're just generating a core dump and there's no reason we need contiguous memory. Change the allocation to vmalloc(). We'll change the free in binfmt_elf to kvfree() which works regardless of how the memory was allocated. Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx> --- I don't know this code at all, but I _think_ I've identified the places where the memory is freed correctly. Please double-check that I didn't miss anything obvious, though! fs/binfmt_elf.c | 2 +- kernel/regset.c | 7 ++++--- 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/fs/binfmt_elf.c b/fs/binfmt_elf.c index 5397b552fbeb..ac178ad38823 100644 --- a/fs/binfmt_elf.c +++ b/fs/binfmt_elf.c @@ -1928,7 +1928,7 @@ static void free_note_info(struct elf_note_info *info) threads = t->next; WARN_ON(t->notes[0].data && t->notes[0].data != &t->prstatus); for (i = 1; i < info->thread_notes; ++i) - kfree(t->notes[i].data); + kvfree(t->notes[i].data); kfree(t); } kfree(info->psinfo.data); diff --git a/kernel/regset.c b/kernel/regset.c index 586823786f39..ed8d8cf3a22c 100644 --- a/kernel/regset.c +++ b/kernel/regset.c @@ -2,6 +2,7 @@ #include <linux/export.h> #include <linux/slab.h> #include <linux/regset.h> +#include <linux/vmalloc.h> static int __regset_get(struct task_struct *target, const struct user_regset *regset, @@ -16,14 +17,14 @@ static int __regset_get(struct task_struct *target, if (size > regset->n * regset->size) size = regset->n * regset->size; if (!p) { - to_free = p = kzalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL); + to_free = p = vmalloc(size); if (!p) return -ENOMEM; } res = regset->regset_get(target, regset, (struct membuf){.p = p, .left = size}); if (res < 0) { - kfree(to_free); + vfree(to_free); return res; } *data = p; @@ -71,6 +72,6 @@ int copy_regset_to_user(struct task_struct *target, ret = regset_get_alloc(target, regset, size, &buf); if (ret > 0) ret = copy_to_user(data, buf, ret) ? -EFAULT : 0; - kfree(buf); + vfree(buf); return ret; } -- 2.43.0.594.gd9cf4e227d-goog