The patch titled Subject: Revert "vmalloc: back off when the current task is killed" has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed.patch This patch should soon appear at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed.patch and later at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Revert "vmalloc: back off when the current task is killed" This reverts 5d17a73a2ebe ("vmalloc: back off when the current task is killed") and 171012f56127 ("mm: don't warn when vmalloc() fails due to a fatal signal"). 5d17a73a2ebe ("vmalloc: back off when the current task is killed") made all vmalloc allocations from a signal-killed task fail. We have seen crashes in the tty driver from this, where a killed task exiting tries to switch back to N_TTY, fails n_tty_open because of the vmalloc failing, and later crashes when dereferencing tty->disc_data. Arguably, relying on a vmalloc() call to succeed in order to properly exit a task is not the most robust way of doing things. There will be a follow-up patch to the tty code to fall back to the N_NULL ldisc. But the justification to make that vmalloc() call fail like this isn't convincing, either. The patch mentions an OOM victim exhausting the memory reserves and thus deadlocking the machine. But the OOM killer is only one, improbable source of fatal signals. It doesn't make sense to fail allocations preemptively with plenty of memory in most cases. The patch doesn't mention real-life instances where vmalloc sites would exhaust memory, which makes it sound more like a theoretical issue to begin with. But just in case, the OOM access to memory reserves has been restricted on the allocator side in cd04ae1e2dc8 ("mm, oom: do not rely on TIF_MEMDIE for memory reserves access"), which should take care of any theoretical concerns on that front. Revert this patch, and the follow-up that suppresses the allocation warnings when we fail the allocations due to a signal. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20171004185906.GB2136@xxxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Alan Cox <alan@llwyncelyn.cymru> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxx> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/vmalloc.c | 6 ------ 1 file changed, 6 deletions(-) diff -puN mm/vmalloc.c~revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed mm/vmalloc.c --- a/mm/vmalloc.c~revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed +++ a/mm/vmalloc.c @@ -1695,11 +1695,6 @@ static void *__vmalloc_area_node(struct for (i = 0; i < area->nr_pages; i++) { struct page *page; - if (fatal_signal_pending(current)) { - area->nr_pages = i; - goto fail_no_warn; - } - if (node == NUMA_NO_NODE) page = alloc_page(alloc_mask|highmem_mask); else @@ -1723,7 +1718,6 @@ fail: warn_alloc(gfp_mask, NULL, "vmalloc: allocation failure, allocated %ld of %ld bytes", (area->nr_pages*PAGE_SIZE), area->size); -fail_no_warn: vfree(area->addr); return NULL; } _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx are revert-vmalloc-back-off-when-the-current-task-is-killed.patch tty-fall-back-to-n_null-if-switching-to-n_tty-fails-during-hangup.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe mm-commits" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html