[PATCH v2 5/9] memblock: make free_reserved_area() more robust

Mike Rapoport
2026-03-23T07:49:46Z

There are two potential problems in free_reserved_area():
* it may free a page with not-existent buddy page
* it may be passed a virtual address from an alias mapping that won't
be properly translated by virt_to_page(), for example a symbol on arm64

While first issue is quite theoretical and the second one does not manifest
itself because all the callers do the right thing, it is easy to make
free_reserved_area() robust enough to avoid these potential issues.

Replace the loop by virtual address with a loop by pfn that uses
for_each_valid_pfn() and use __pa() or __pa_symbol() depending on the
virtual mapping alias to correctly determine the loop boundaries.

Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
---
mm/memblock.c | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
1 file changed, 23 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/memblock.c b/mm/memblock.c
index c0896efbee97..eb086724802a 100644
--- a/mm/memblock.c
+++ b/mm/memblock.c
@@ -895,21 +895,32 @@ int __init_memblock memblock_remove(phys_addr_t base, phys_addr_t size)

unsigned long free_reserved_area(void *start, void *end, int poison, const char *s)
{
- void *pos;
- unsigned long pages = 0;
+ phys_addr_t start_pa, end_pa;
+ unsigned long pages = 0, pfn;

- start = (void *)PAGE_ALIGN((unsigned long)start);
- end = (void *)((unsigned long)end & PAGE_MASK);
- for (pos = start; pos < end; pos += PAGE_SIZE, pages++) {
- struct page *page = virt_to_page(pos);
+ /*
+ * end is the first address past the region and it may be beyond what
+ * __pa() or __pa_symbol() can handle.
+ * Use the address included in the range for the conversion and add
+ * back 1 afterwards.
+ */
+ if (__is_kernel((unsigned long)start)) {
+ start_pa = __pa_symbol(start);
+ end_pa = __pa_symbol(end - 1) + 1;
+ } else {
+ start_pa = __pa(start);
+ end_pa = __pa(end - 1) + 1;
+ }
+
+ for_each_valid_pfn(pfn, PFN_UP(start_pa), PFN_DOWN(end_pa)) {
+ struct page *page = pfn_to_page(pfn);
void *direct_map_addr;

/*
- * 'direct_map_addr' might be different from 'pos'
- * because some architectures' virt_to_page()
- * work with aliases. Getting the direct map
- * address ensures that we get a _writeable_
- * alias for the memset().
+ * 'direct_map_addr' might be different from the kernel virtual
+ * address because some architectures use aliases.
+ * Going via physical address, pfn_to_page() and page_address()
+ * ensures that we get a _writeable_ alias for the memset().
*/
direct_map_addr = page_address(page);
/*
@@ -921,6 +932,7 @@ unsigned long free_reserved_area(void *start, void *end, int poison, const char
memset(direct_map_addr, poison, PAGE_SIZE);

free_reserved_page(page);
+ pages++;
}

if (pages && s)
--
2.53.0