If we get a memory failure in the middle of a file THP, I think we handle it poorly. int memory_failure(unsigned long pfn, int flags) ... if (TestSetPageHWPoison(p)) { ... orig_head = hpage = compound_head(p); ... if (PageTransHuge(hpage)) { if (try_to_split_thp_page(p, "Memory Failure") < 0) { action_result(pfn, MF_MSG_UNSPLIT_THP, MF_IGNORED); return -EBUSY; } static int try_to_split_thp_page(struct page *page, const char *msg) { lock_page(page); if (!PageAnon(page) || unlikely(split_huge_page(page))) { unsigned long pfn = page_to_pfn(page); unlock_page(page); if (!PageAnon(page)) pr_info("%s: %#lx: non anonymous thp\n", msg, pfn); else pr_info("%s: %#lx: thp split failed\n", msg, pfn); put_page(page); return -EBUSY; So (for some reason) we don't even try to split a file THP. But then, if we take a page fault on a file THP: static struct page *next_uptodate_page(struct page *page, ... if (PageHWPoison(page)) goto skip; (... but we're only testing the head page here, which isn't necessarily the one which got the error ...) if (pmd_none(*vmf->pmd) && PageTransHuge(page)) { vm_fault_t ret = do_set_pmd(vmf, page); So we now map the PMD-sized page into userspace, even though it has a HWPoison in it. I think there are two things that we should be doing: 1. Attempt to split THPs which are file-backed. That makes most of this problem disappear because there won't be THPs with HWPoison, mostly. 2. When the THP fails to split, use a spare page flag to indicate that the THP contains a HWPoison bit in one of its subpages. There are a lot of PF_SECOND flags available for this purpose. but I know almost nothing about the memory-failure subsystem and I'm still learning all the complexities of THPs, so it's entirely possible I've overlooked something important.