In kdump kernel, memcg usually is disabled with 'cgroup_disable=memory' for saving memory. Now kdump kernel will always panic when dump vmcore to local disk: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000ab8 PGD 5fcab067 P4D 5fcab067 PUD 5ff73067 PMD 0 Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 0 PID: 598 Comm: makedumpfile Not tainted 5.3.0+ #26 Hardware name: HPE ProLiant DL385 Gen10/ProLiant DL385 Gen10, BIOS A40 10/02/2018 RIP: 0010:mem_cgroup_track_foreign_dirty_slowpath+0x38/0x140 Code: 55 48 8b 2d 6a bd 12 01 53 4c 8b 67 38 0f 1f 44 00 00 49 8b 06 48 89 e9 31 db be ff ff ff ff 48 8b 38 49 8d 84 24 d0 0a 00 00 <48> 39 78 e8 74 5a 48 8b 50 f8 48 39 ca 79 0e 44 8b 00 41 83 f8 01 RSP: 0018:ffffbc9300817bd0 EFLAGS: 00010046 RAX: 0000000000000ad0 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 00000000fffba227 RDX: fffffffffffffff8 RSI: 00000000ffffffff RDI: 0000000000000004 RBP: 00000000fffba227 R08: 0000000000030340 R09: ffffbc9300817d10 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000001000 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: ffff999c1fa2bcf0 R14: ffff999c1f7bcc78 R15: ffffe51fc177a8c0 FS: 00007f84f14c2b80(0000) GS:ffff999c22200000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000ab8 CR3: 000000005f564000 CR4: 00000000003406b0 Call Trace: __set_page_dirty+0x52/0xc0 iomap_set_page_dirty+0x50/0x90 iomap_write_end+0x6e/0x270 iomap_write_actor+0xce/0x170 ? iomap_write_end+0x270/0x270 iomap_apply+0xba/0x11e ? iomap_write_end+0x270/0x270 iomap_file_buffered_write+0x62/0x90 ? iomap_write_end+0x270/0x270 xfs_file_buffered_aio_write+0xca/0x320 [xfs] new_sync_write+0x12d/0x1d0 vfs_write+0xa5/0x1a0 ksys_write+0x59/0xd0 do_syscall_64+0x59/0x1e0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xa9 RIP: 0033:0x7f84f1093ab5 And this will corrupt the 1st kernel too with 'cgroup_disable=memory'. >From the trace and with debugging, it is pointing to commit 97b27821b485 ("writeback, memcg: Implement foreign dirty flushing") which introduced this regression. Disabling memcg causes the null pointer dereference at uninitialized data in function mem_cgroup_track_foreign_dirty_slowpath(). Fix it by returning directly if memcg is disabled, but not trying to record the foreign writebacks with dirty pages. Fixed: 97b27821b485 ("writeback, memcg: Implement foreign dirty flushing") Signed-off-by: Baoquan He <bhe@xxxxxxxxxx> --- v1->v2: Move the checking code into mem_cgroup_track_foreign_dirty_slowpath() because usually memcg is enabled by default, and the original condition checking in mem_cgroup_track_foreign_dirty() is more unlikely being true to make it return. mm/memcontrol.c | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c index f3c15bb07cce..84e3fdb1ccb4 100644 --- a/mm/memcontrol.c +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c @@ -4317,6 +4317,9 @@ void mem_cgroup_track_foreign_dirty_slowpath(struct page *page, trace_track_foreign_dirty(page, wb); + if (mem_cgroup_disabled()) + return; + /* * Pick the slot to use. If there is already a slot for @wb, keep * using it. If not replace the oldest one which isn't being -- 2.17.2