[PATCH v4 02/16] mm: hugetlb: Return -ENOSPC on memcg charge failure

Ackerley Tng via B4 Relay <[email protected]> Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:41:10 -0700
Newsgroups org.kernel.vger.cgroups,org.kernel.feeds.b4-sent,org.kernel.vger.linux-doc,org.kernel.vger.linux-kernel,org.kernel.vger.stable,org.kvack.linux-mm
Message-ID <20260722-hugetlb-alloc-failure-fixes-v4-2-88e8b81970dc@google.com>
From: Ackerley Tng <[email protected]>

When mem_cgroup_charge_hugetlb() fails with -ENOMEM, alloc_hugetlb_folio()
currently propagates this error. This results in the page fault handler
returning VM_FAULT_OOM.

Because HugeTLB allocations are high-order and use __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL,
they bypass the OOM killer. Returning VM_FAULT_OOM to the #PF handler
without triggering the OOM killer (or having it make progress) leads to
an infinite loop of retrying the fault.

Avoid this loop by returning -ENOSPC when charging fails, which maps to
VM_FAULT_SIGBUS, terminating the process cleanly.

Make mem_cgroup_charge_hugetlb() fault handling use a common error handling
path, the same handling used for hugetlb_cgroup_uncharge_cgroup{,_rsvd}(),
which also don't trigger the OOM killer and hence opt to terminate the
process with a SIGBUS.

Fixes: 991135774c0e0 ("memcg/hugetlb: introduce mem_cgroup_charge_hugetlb")
Cc: [email protected]
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Muchun Song <[email protected]>
Tested-by: Joshua Hahn <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Joshua Hahn <[email protected]>
---
 mm/hugetlb.c | 12 +++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/mm/hugetlb.c b/mm/hugetlb.c
index 36fa3fb3945d8..15f9c5a9f75e2 100644
--- a/mm/hugetlb.c
+++ b/mm/hugetlb.c
@@ -3010,7 +3010,7 @@ struct folio *alloc_hugetlb_folio(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 
 	if (ret == -ENOMEM) {
 		free_huge_folio(folio);
-		return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);
+		goto err;
 	}
 
 	return folio;
@@ -3035,6 +3035,16 @@ struct folio *alloc_hugetlb_folio(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 out_end_reservation:
 	if (map_chg != MAP_CHG_ENFORCED)
 		vma_end_reservation(h, vma, addr);
+err:
+	/*
+	 * Return -ENOSPC when this function fails to allocate or charge a huge
+	 * page. If a standard (PAGE_SIZE) page allocation fails, the OOM killer
+	 * is given a chance to run, which may resolve the failure on
+	 * retry. However, for HugeTLB allocations, the OOM killer is not
+	 * triggered.  Returning -ENOMEM (or anything resulting in VM_FAULT_OOM)
+	 * would leak to the #PF handler, causing it to loop indefinitely
+	 * retrying the fault.
+	 */
 	return ERR_PTR(-ENOSPC);
 }
 

-- 
2.55.0.229.g6434b31f56-goog