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 2/2] Documentation: document panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2026 08:29:42 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260323-ecc_panic-v1-2-72a1921726c5@debian.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20260323-ecc_panic-v1-0-72a1921726c5@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 97e12359775c9..3310fb8272fb9 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
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-03-23 16:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-03-23 15:29 [PATCH 0/2] mm/memory-failure: add panic option for unrecoverable pages Breno Leitao
2026-03-23 15:29 ` [PATCH 1/2] mm/memory-failure: add panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl Breno Leitao
2026-03-23 15:29 ` Breno Leitao [this message]
2026-03-23 16:51 ` [PATCH 2/2] Documentation: document " Randy Dunlap
2026-03-24 10:09 ` Breno Leitao
2026-03-24 11:48 ` Akira Yokosawa
2026-03-24 16:27 ` Randy Dunlap
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20260323-ecc_panic-v1-2-72a1921726c5@debian.org \
--to=leitao@debian.org \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=corbet@lwn.net \
--cc=kernel-team@meta.com \
--cc=linmiaohe@huawei.com \
--cc=linux-doc@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-mm@kvack.org \
--cc=nao.horiguchi@gmail.com \
--cc=skhan@linuxfoundation.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox