Re: [PATCH v8 12/17] x86/e820: temporarily enable KHO scratch for memory below 1M

H. Peter Anvin
2025-11-25T00:59:10Z

On November 24, 2025 11:24:58 AM PST, Usama Arif <usamaarif642@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>On 09/05/2025 08:46, Changyuan Lyu wrote:
>> From: Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com>
>>
>> KHO kernels are special and use only scratch memory for memblock
>> allocations, but memory below 1M is ignored by kernel after early boot
>> and cannot be naturally marked as scratch.
>>
>> To allow allocation of the real-mode trampoline and a few (if any) other
>> very early allocations from below 1M forcibly mark the memory below 1M
>> as scratch.
>>
>> After real mode trampoline is allocated, clear that scratch marking.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com>
>> Co-developed-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
>> Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
>> Co-developed-by: Changyuan Lyu <changyuanl@google.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Changyuan Lyu <changyuanl@google.com>
>> Acked-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
>> ---
>> arch/x86/kernel/e820.c | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
>> arch/x86/realmode/init.c | 2 ++
>> 2 files changed, 20 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>> index 9920122018a0b..c3acbd26408ba 100644
>> --- a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>> +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>> @@ -1299,6 +1299,24 @@ void __init e820__memblock_setup(void)
>> memblock_add(entry->addr, entry->size);
>> }
>>
>> + /*
>> + * At this point memblock is only allowed to allocate from memory
>> + * below 1M (aka ISA_END_ADDRESS) up until direct map is completely set
>> + * up in init_mem_mapping().
>> + *
>> + * KHO kernels are special and use only scratch memory for memblock
>> + * allocations, but memory below 1M is ignored by kernel after early
>> + * boot and cannot be naturally marked as scratch.
>> + *
>> + * To allow allocation of the real-mode trampoline and a few (if any)
>> + * other very early allocations from below 1M forcibly mark the memory
>> + * below 1M as scratch.
>> + *
>> + * After real mode trampoline is allocated, we clear that scratch
>> + * marking.
>> + */
>> + memblock_mark_kho_scratch(0, SZ_1M);
>> +
>> /*
>> * 32-bit systems are limited to 4BG of memory even with HIGHMEM and
>> * to even less without it.
>> diff --git a/arch/x86/realmode/init.c b/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>> index f9bc444a3064d..9b9f4534086d2 100644
>> --- a/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>> +++ b/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>> @@ -65,6 +65,8 @@ void __init reserve_real_mode(void)
>> * setup_arch().
>> */
>> memblock_reserve(0, SZ_1M);
>> +
>> + memblock_clear_kho_scratch(0, SZ_1M);
>> }
>>
>> static void __init sme_sev_setup_real_mode(struct trampoline_header *th)
>
>Hello!
>
>I am working with Breno who reported that we are seeing the below warning at boot
>when rolling out 6.16 in Meta fleet. It is difficult to reproduce on a single host
>manually but we are seeing this several times a day inside the fleet.
>
> 20:16:33 ------------[ cut here ]------------
> 20:16:33 WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 0 at mm/memblock.c:668 memblock_add_range+0x316/0x330
> 20:16:33 Modules linked in:
> 20:16:33 CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Tainted: G S 6.16.1-0_fbk0_0_gc0739ee5037a #1 NONE
> 20:16:33 Tainted: [S]=CPU_OUT_OF_SPEC
> 20:16:33 RIP: 0010:memblock_add_range+0x316/0x330
> 20:16:33 Code: ff ff ff 89 5c 24 08 41 ff c5 44 89 6c 24 10 48 63 74 24 08 48 63 54 24 10 e8 26 0c 00 00 e9 41 ff ff ff 0f 0b e9 af fd ff ff <0f> 0b e9 b7 fd ff ff 0f 0b 0f 0b cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc
> 20:16:33 RSP: 0000:ffffffff83403dd8 EFLAGS: 00010083 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000
> 20:16:33 RAX: ffffffff8476ff90 RBX: 0000000000001c00 RCX: 0000000000000002
> 20:16:33 RDX: 00000000ffffffff RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffffffff83bad4d8
> 20:16:33 RBP: 000000000009f000 R08: 0000000000000020 R09: 8000000000097101
> 20:16:33 R10: ffffffffff2004b0 R11: 203a6d6f646e6172 R12: 000000000009ec00
> 20:16:33 R13: 0000000000000002 R14: 0000000000100000 R15: 000000000009d000
> 20:16:33 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:0000000000000000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
> 20:16:33 CR2: ffff888065413ff8 CR3: 00000000663b7000 CR4: 00000000000000b0
> 20:16:33 Call Trace:
> 20:16:33 <TASK>
> 20:16:33 ? __memblock_reserve+0x75/0x80
> 20:16:33 ? setup_arch+0x30f/0xb10
> 20:16:33 ? start_kernel+0x58/0x960
> 20:16:33 ? x86_64_start_reservations+0x20/0x20
> 20:16:33 ? x86_64_start_kernel+0x13d/0x140
> 20:16:33 ? common_startup_64+0x13e/0x140
> 20:16:33 </TASK>
> 20:16:33 ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
>
>
>Rolling out with memblock=debug is not really an option in a large scale fleet due to the
>time added to boot. But I did try on one of the hosts (without reproducing the issue) and I see:
>
>[ 0.000616] memory.cnt = 0x6
>[ 0.000617] memory[0x0] [0x0000000000001000-0x000000000009bfff], 0x000000000009b000 bytes flags: 0x40
>[ 0.000620] memory[0x1] [0x000000000009f000-0x000000000009ffff], 0x0000000000001000 bytes flags: 0x40
>[ 0.000621] memory[0x2] [0x0000000000100000-0x000000005ed09fff], 0x000000005ec0a000 bytes flags: 0x0
>...
>
>The 0x40 (MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH) is coming from memblock_mark_kho_scratch in e820__memblock_setup. I believe this
>should be under ifdef like the diff at the end? (Happy to send this as a patch for review if it makes sense).
>We have KEXEC_HANDOVER disabled in our defconfig, therefore MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH shouldnt be selected and
>we shouldnt have any MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH type regions in our memblock reservations.
>
>The other thing I did was insert a while(1) just before the warning and inspected the registers in qemu.
>R14 held the base register, and R15 held the size at that point.
>In the warning R14 is 0x100000 meaning that someone is reserving a region with a different flag to MEMBLOCK_NONE
>at the boundary of MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH.
>
>diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>index c3acbd26408ba..26e4062a0bd09 100644
>--- a/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/e820.c
>@@ -1299,6 +1299,7 @@ void __init e820__memblock_setup(void)
> memblock_add(entry->addr, entry->size);
> }
>
>+#ifdef CONFIG_MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH
> /*
> * At this point memblock is only allowed to allocate from memory
> * below 1M (aka ISA_END_ADDRESS) up until direct map is completely set
>@@ -1316,7 +1317,7 @@ void __init e820__memblock_setup(void)
> * marking.
> */
> memblock_mark_kho_scratch(0, SZ_1M);
>-
>+#endif
> /*
> * 32-bit systems are limited to 4BG of memory even with HIGHMEM and
> * to even less without it.
>diff --git a/arch/x86/realmode/init.c b/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>index 88be32026768c..1cd80293a3e23 100644
>--- a/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>+++ b/arch/x86/realmode/init.c
>@@ -66,8 +66,9 @@ void __init reserve_real_mode(void)
> * setup_arch().
> */
> memblock_reserve(0, SZ_1M);
>-
>+#ifdef CONFIG_MEMBLOCK_KHO_SCRATCH
> memblock_clear_kho_scratch(0, SZ_1M);
>+#endif
> }
>
> static void __init sme_sev_setup_real_mode(struct trampoline_header *th)

What does "scratch" mean in this exact context? (Sorry, don't have the code in front of me.)