percpu: fix race on alloc failed warning limit
authorVlad Dumitrescu <vdumitrescu@nvidia.com>
Fri, 22 Aug 2025 22:55:16 +0000 (15:55 -0700)
committerAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Tue, 9 Sep 2025 06:45:10 +0000 (23:45 -0700)
commit7989fdce69ec0a928e136477da2aa208a191fba2
tree7349d9925656522d8b2b0b81a98f40f14d93c8c8
parent3be306cccdccede13e3cefd0c14e430cc2b7c9c7
percpu: fix race on alloc failed warning limit

The 'allocation failed, ...' warning messages can cause unlimited log
spam, contrary to the implementation's intent.

The warn_limit variable is accessed without synchronization.  If more than
<warn_limit> threads enter the warning path at the same time, the variable
will get decremented past 0.  Once it becomes negative, the non-zero check
will always return true leading to unlimited log spam.

Use atomic operation to access warn_limit and change condition to test for
non-negative (>= 0) - atomic_dec_if_positive will return -1 once
warn_limit becomes 0.  Continue to print disable message alongside the
last warning.

While the change cited in Fixes is only adjacent, the warning limit
implementation was correct before it.  Only non-atomic allocations were
considered for warnings, and those happened to hold pcpu_alloc_mutex while
accessing warn_limit.

[vdumitrescu@nvidia.com: prevent warn_limit from going negative, per Christoph Lameter]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ee87cc59-2717-4dbb-8052-1d2692c5aaaa@nvidia.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ab22061a-a62f-4429-945b-744e5cc4ba35@nvidia.com
Fixes: f7d77dfc91f7 ("mm/percpu.c: print error message too if atomic alloc failed")
Signed-off-by: Vlad Dumitrescu <vdumitrescu@nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter (Ampere) <cl@gentwo.org>
Cc: Dennis Zhou <dennis@kernel.org>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
mm/percpu.c