* [merged mm-stable] documentation-document-panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure-sysctl.patch removed from -mm tree
@ 2026-08-05 2:22 Andrew Morton
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From: Andrew Morton @ 2026-08-05 2:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: mm-commits, vbabka, surenb, shuah, rppt, rostedt, nao.horiguchi,
mhocko, mhiramat, mathieu.desnoyers, ljs, linmiaohe, liam,
lance.yang, david, corbet, leitao, akpm
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The quilt patch titled
Subject: Documentation: document panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl
has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was
documentation-document-panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure-sysctl.patch
This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-stable branch
of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
------------------------------------------------------
From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Subject: Documentation: document panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl
Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2026 05:46:08 -0700
Add documentation for the new vm.panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
sysctl, describing which failures trigger a panic (kernel-owned pages the
handler cannot recover) and which are intentionally left out (transient
allocator races and unclassified pages).
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260630-ecc_panic-v10-5-c6ed5b62eea2@debian.org
Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Acked-by: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Cc: Liam R. Howlett <liam@infradead.org>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@kernel.org>
Cc: "Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Naoya Horiguchi <nao.horiguchi@gmail.com>
Cc: Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
---
Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst | 80 ++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 80 insertions(+)
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst~documentation-document-panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure-sysctl
+++ a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/
- page-cluster
- page_lock_unfairness
- panic_on_oom
+- panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
- percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
- stat_interval
- stat_refresh
@@ -925,6 +926,85 @@ panic_on_oom=2+kdump gives you very stro
why oom happens. You can get snapshot.
+panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
+======================================
+
+When a hardware memory error (e.g. multi-bit ECC) hits a kernel page
+that cannot be recovered by the memory failure handler, the default
+behaviour is to ignore the error and continue operation. This is
+dangerous because the corrupted data remains accessible to the kernel,
+risking silent data corruption or a delayed crash when the poisoned
+memory is next accessed.
+
+When enabled, this sysctl triggers a panic on memory failure events
+hitting kernel-owned pages that the handler cannot recover:
+``PageReserved`` (firmware reservations, kernel image, vDSO, zero
+page, and similar memblock-reserved regions), ``PageSlab``,
+``PageTable``, and ``PageLargeKmalloc``. These are owned by the
+kernel and the memory failure handler cannot reliably evict their
+contents.
+
+Other unrecoverable kernel-owned populations (vmalloc allocations,
+kernel stack pages, ...) are not currently covered because the
+handler has no page-type signal that distinguishes them from a
+userspace folio temporarily off the LRU during migration or
+compaction. Such pages still go through the standard
+MF_MSG_GET_HWPOISON path: ``PG_hwpoison`` is set on them and a
+delayed crash on the next access remains possible. Coverage may
+grow as the handler gains stronger kernel-ownership signals.
+
+Recoverable failure paths are also intentionally left out: in-flight
+buddy allocations and other transient races with the page allocator
+can reach the same diagnostic, and panicking on them would risk
+killing the box for a page destined for userspace where the standard
+SIGBUS recovery path applies. Pages whose state could not be
+classified at all are not covered either, since an unknown state is
+not a sound basis for a panic decision.
+
+For many environments it is preferable to panic immediately with a clean
+crash dump that captures the original error context, rather than to
+continue and face a random crash later whose cause is difficult to
+diagnose.
+
+Use cases
+---------
+
+This option is most useful in environments where unattributed crashes
+are expensive to debug or where data integrity must take precedence
+over availability:
+
+* Large fleets, where multi-bit ECC errors on kernel pages are observed
+ regularly and post-mortem analysis of an unrelated downstream crash
+ (often seconds to minutes after the original error) consumes
+ significant engineering effort.
+
+* Systems configured with kdump, where panicking at the moment of the
+ hardware error produces a vmcore that still contains the faulting
+ address, the affected page state, and the originating MCE/GHES
+ record — context that is typically lost by the time a delayed crash
+ occurs.
+
+* High-availability clusters that rely on fast, deterministic node
+ failure for failover, and prefer an immediate panic over silent data
+ corruption propagating to replicas or persistent storage.
+
+* Kernel and platform developers reproducing hwpoison issues with
+ tools such as ``mce-inject`` or error-injection debugfs interfaces,
+ where panicking on the unrecoverable path makes regressions
+ immediately visible instead of surfacing as later, unrelated
+ failures.
+
+= =====================================================================
+0 Try to continue operation (default).
+1 Panic immediately. If the ``panic`` sysctl is also non-zero then the
+ machine will be rebooted.
+= =====================================================================
+
+Example::
+
+ echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
+
+
percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
=============================
_
Patches currently in -mm which might be from leitao@debian.org are
mm-migrate-report-rcu-tasks-quiescent-states-in-migrate_pages_batch.patch
mm-kmemleak-report-leaks-only-after-n-consecutive-unreferenced-scans.patch
mm-kmemleak-factor-leak-confirmation-into-a-helper.patch
selftests-mm-test-kmemleaks-n-consecutive-scan-leak-confirmation.patch
radix-tree-fix-kmemleak-false-positives-on-tree-head-reassignment.patch
mm-kmemleak-report-rcu-tasks-quiescent-states-during-the-scan.patch
mm-kmemleak-default-min_unref_scans-to-2-for-verbose-auto-scan.patch
documentation-kmemleak-document-the-conditional-min_unref_scans-default.patch
selftests-mm-kmemleak-drop-stale-min_unref_scans-default-from-comments.patch
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2026-08-05 2:22 [merged mm-stable] documentation-document-panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure-sysctl.patch removed from -mm tree Andrew Morton
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