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From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
To: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>,
	 Naoya Horiguchi <nao.horiguchi@gmail.com>,
	 Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
	 Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	 linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>,
	 kernel-team@meta.com
Subject: [PATCH v2 3/3] Documentation: document panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2026 04:00:18 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260331-ecc_panic-v2-3-9e40d0f64f7a@debian.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260331-ecc_panic-v2-0-9e40d0f64f7a@debian.org>

Document the new vm.panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl in the
admin guide, following the same format as panic_on_unrecovered_nmi.

Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
---
 Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst | 27 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 27 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
index 97e12359775c..a811f503bca6 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
 - page-cluster
 - page_lock_unfairness
 - panic_on_oom
+- panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
 - percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
 - stat_interval
 - stat_refresh
@@ -925,6 +926,32 @@ panic_on_oom=2+kdump gives you very strong tool to investigate
 why oom happens. You can get snapshot.
 
 
+panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure
+======================================
+
+When a hardware memory error (e.g. multi-bit ECC) hits an in-use 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.
+
+Pages that reach this path include slab objects (dentry cache, inode
+cache, etc.), page tables, kernel stacks, and other kernel allocations
+that lack the reverse mapping needed to isolate all references.
+
+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.
+
+= =====================================================================
+0 Try to continue operation (default).
+1 Panic immediately.  If the ``panic`` sysctl is also non-zero then the
+  machine will be rebooted.
+= =====================================================================
+
+
 percpu_pagelist_high_fraction
 =============================
 

-- 
2.52.0


      parent reply	other threads:[~2026-03-31 11:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-03-31 11:00 [PATCH v2 0/3] mm/memory-failure: add panic option for unrecoverable pages Breno Leitao
2026-03-31 11:00 ` [PATCH v2 1/3] mm/memory-failure: report MF_MSG_KERNEL for reserved pages Breno Leitao
2026-03-31 11:00 ` [PATCH v2 2/3] mm/memory-failure: add panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl Breno Leitao
2026-03-31 11:00 ` Breno Leitao [this message]

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