kernel/linux.git/mm/kfence, branch v7.2-rc2

Merge tag 'slab-for-7.2-part2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vbabka/slab

2026-06-22T15:28:48+00:00

Pull more slab updates from Vlastimil Babka: - Introduce and wire up a new alloc_flags parameter for modifying slab-specific behavior without adding or reusing gfp flags. Also introduce slab_alloc_context to keep function parameter bloat in check. Both are similar to what the page allocator does. kmalloc_flags() exposes alloc_flags for mm-internal users. - SLAB_ALLOC_NOLOCK flag is used to implement kmalloc_nolock() behavior without relying on lack of __GFP_RECLAIM, which caused false positives with workarounds like fd3634312a04 ("debugobject: Make it work with deferred page initialization - again"). - SLAB_ALLOC_NO_RECURSE replaces __GFP_NO_OBJ_EXT, which could have been removed, but pending memory allocation profiling changes in mm tree have grown a new user - there is however a work ongoing to replace that too, so __GFP_NO_OBJ_EXT should eventually be removed. (Vlastimil Babka) - Add kmem_buckets_alloc_track_caller() with a user to be added in the net tree (Pedro Falcato) - Fixes for kernel-doc and slabinfo (Randy Dunlap, Yichong Chen) * tag 'slab-for-7.2-part2' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/vbabka/slab: tools/mm/slabinfo: fix total_objects attribute name slab: recognize @GFP parameter as optional in kernel-doc mm/slab: add a node-track-caller variant for kmem buckets allocation mm/slab: replace __GFP_NO_OBJ_EXT with SLAB_ALLOC_NO_RECURSE for sheaves mm/slab: remove __GFP_NO_OBJ_EXT usage from alloc_slab_obj_exts() mm/slab: introduce kmalloc_flags() mm/slab: allow __GFP_NOMEMALLOC and __GFP_NOWARN for kmalloc_nolock() mm/slab: pass slab_alloc_context to __do_kmalloc_node() mm/slab: allow kmem_cache_alloc_bulk() with any gfp flags mm/slab: replace slab_alloc_node() parameters with slab_alloc_context mm/slab: pass alloc_flags through slab_post_alloc_hook() chain mm/slab: pass alloc_flags to new slab allocation mm/slab: add alloc_flags to slab_alloc_context mm/slab: replace struct partial_context with slab_alloc_context mm/slab: introduce alloc_flags and SLAB_ALLOC_NOLOCK mm/slab: introduce slab_alloc_context mm/slab: stop inlining __slab_alloc_node() mm/slab: do not init any kfence objects on allocation

Merge tag 'mm-nonmm-stable-2026-06-21-10-22' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

2026-06-21T20:20:19+00:00

Pull non-MM updates from Andrew Morton: - "taskstats: fix TGID dead-thread stat retention" (Yiyang Chen) Fix a taskstats TGID aggregation bug where fields added in the TGID query path were not preserved after thread exit, and adds a kselftest covering the regression. - "lib/tests: string_helpers: Slight improvements" (Andy Shevchenko) Improve lib/tests/string_helpers_kunit.c a little - "lib/base64: decode fixes" (Josh Law) Address minor issues in lib/base64.c - "selftests/filelock: Make output more kselftestish" (Mark Brown) Make the output from the ofdlocks test a bit easier for tooling to work with. Also ignore the generated file - "uaccess: unify inline vs outline copy_{from,to}_user() selection" (Yury Norov) Simplify the usercopy code by removing the selectability of inlining copy_{from,to}_user(). - "ocfs2: validate inline xattr header consumers" (ZhengYuan Huang) Fix a number of possible issues in the ocfs2 xattr code - "lib and lib/cmdline enhancements" (Dmitry Antipov) Provide additional robustness checking in the cmdline handling code and its in-kernel testing and selftests - "cleanup the RAID6 P/Q library" (Christoph Hellwig) Clean up the RAID6 P/Q library to match the recent updates to the RAID 5 XOR library and other CRC/crypto libraries - "ocfs2: harden inode validators against forged metadata" (Michael Bommarito) Add three structural checks to OCFS2 dinode validation so malformed on-disk fields are rejected before ocfs2_populate_inode() copies them into the in-core inode - "lib/raid: replace __get_free_pages() call with kmalloc()" (Mike Rapoport) Clean up the lib/raid code by using kmalloc() in more places * tag 'mm-nonmm-stable-2026-06-21-10-22' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm: (108 commits) ocfs2: fix circular locking dependency in ocfs2_dio_end_io_write ocfs2: fix NULL h_transaction deref in ocfs2_assure_trans_credits lib: interval_tree_test: validate benchmark parameters ocfs2: avoid moving extents to occupied clusters treewide: fix transposed "sign" typos and update spelling.txt ocfs2: fix UBSAN array-index-out-of-bounds in ocfs2_sum_rightmost_rec fat: reject BPB volumes whose data area starts beyond total sectors selftests/uevent: increase __UEVENT_BUFFER_SIZE to avoid ENOBUFS on busy systems lib/test_firmware: allocate the configured into_buf size fs: efs: remove unneeded debug prints checkpatch: cuppress warnings when Reported-by: is followed by Link: MAINTAINERS: add Alexander as a kcov reviewer mailmap: update Alexander Sverdlin's Email addresses fs: fat: inode: replace sprintf() with scnprintf() ocfs2: fix out-of-bounds write in ocfs2_remove_refcount_extent ocfs2: fix race between ocfs2_control_install_private() and ocfs2_control_release() ocfs2/dlm: require a ref for locking_state debugfs open ocfs2: reject FITRIM ranges shorter than a cluster ocfs2: validate fast symlink target during inode read ocfs2: add journal NULL check in ocfs2_checkpoint_inode() ...

Merge tag 'mm-stable-2026-06-18-09-26' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

2026-06-19T17:14:34+00:00

Pull MM updates from Andrew Morton: - "selftests/mm: clean up build output and verbosity" (Li Wang) Remove some noise from the MM selftests build - "mm: Free contiguous order-0 pages efficiently" (Ryan Roberts) Speed up the freeing of a batch of 0-order pages by first scanning them for coalescing opportunities. This is applicable to vfree() and to the releasing of frozen pages - "mm/damon: introduce DAMOS failed region quota charge ratio" (SeongJae Park) Address a DAMOS usability issue: The DAMOS quota often exhausts prematurely because it charges for all memory attempted, causing slow and inconsistent performance when actions fail on unreclaimable memory. To fix this, a new feature lets users set a smaller, flexible quota charge ratio (via a numerator and denominator) for failed regions. Since failed actions cause less overhead, reducing their quota cost ensures more predictable and efficient DAMOS processing - "selftests/cgroup: improve zswap tests robustness and support large page sizes" (Li Wang) Fix various spurious failures and improves the overall robustness of the cgroup zswap selftests - "fix MAP_DROPPABLE not supported errno" (Anthony Yznaga) Fix an issue in the mlock selftests on arm32 - "mm: huge_memory: clean up defrag sysfs with shared" (Breno Leitao) Some maintenance work in the huge_memory code - "treewide: fixup gfp_t printks" (Brendan Jackman) Use the special vprintf() gfp_t conversion in various places - "mm: Fix vmemmap optimization accounting and initialization" (Muchun Song) Fix several bugs in the vmemmap optimization, mainly around incorrect page accounting and memmap initialization in the DAX and memory hotplug paths. It also fixes pageblock migratetype initialization and struct page initialization for ZONE_DEVICE compound pages - "mm/damon: repost non-hotfix reviewed patches in damon/next tree" A sprinkle of unrelated minor bugfixes for DAMON - "mm: remove page_mapped()" (David Hildenbrand) Remove this function from the tree, replacing it with folio_mapped() - "mm/damon: let DAMON be paused and resumed" (SeongJae Park) Allow DAMON to be paused and resumed without losing its current state - "kasan: hw_tags: Disable tagging for stack and page-tables" (Muhammad Usama Anjum) Simplify and speed up kasan by removing its ineffective tagging of stacks and page tables - "mm/damon/reclaim,lru_sort: monitor all system rams by default" (SeongJae Park) Simplify deployment on diverse hardware like NUMA systems by updating DAMON_RECLAIM and DAMON_LRU_SORT to automatically monitor the physical address range covering all System RAM areas by default, replacing the overly restrictive behavior that only targeted the single largest memory block to save on negligible overhead - "mm/damon/sysfs: document filters/ directory as deprecated" (SeongJae Park) Update some DAMON docs - "mm: use spinlock guards for zone lock" (Dmitry Ilvokhin) Switch zone->lock handling over to using the guard() mechanisms - "mm/filemap: tighten mmap_miss hit accounting" (fujunjie) Fix a flaw where the mmap_miss counter over-credited page cache hits during fault-arounds and page-fault retries. This results in significant reduction of redundant synchronous mmap readahead I/O, drastically cutting down execution time and gigabytes read for sparse random or strided memory access workloads - "selftests/cgroup: Fix false positive failures in test_percpu_basic" (Li Wang) Fix a couple of false-positives in the cgroup kmem selftests - "mm/damon/reclaim: support monitoring intervals auto-tuning" (SeongJae Park) Add a new parameter to DAMON permitting DAMON_RECLAIM to automatically tune DAMON's sampling and aggregation intervals - "mm/damon/stat: add kdamond_pid parameter" (SeongJae Park) Change DAMON_STAT to provide the pid of its kdamond - "mm/kmemleak: dedupe verbose scan output" (Breno Leitao) Remove large amounts of duplicated backtraces from the verbose-mode kmemleak output - "mm: remove CONFIG_HAVE_BOOTMEM_INFO_NODE (Part 1)" (David Hildenbrand) Reduce our use of CONFIG_HAVE_BOOTMEM_INFO_NODE, with a view to removing it entirely in a later series - "mm/damon: validate min_region_size to be power of 2" (Liew Rui Yan) Prevent users from passing a non-power-of-2 value of `addr_unit', as this later results in undesirable behavior - "mm: document read_pages and simplify usage" (Frederick Mayle) - "tools/mm/page-types: Fix misc bugs" (Ye Liu) Fix three issues in tools/mm/page-types.c - "mm: misc cleanups from __GFP_UNMAPPED series" (Brendan Jackman) Implement several cleanups in the page allocator and related code - "mm, swap: swap table phase IV: unify allocation" (Kairui Song) Unify the allocation and charging of anon and shmem swap in folios, provides better synchronization, consolidates the metadata management, hence dropping the static array and map, and improves performance - "mm/damon: introduce data attributes monitoring" (SeongJae Park( Extend DAMON to monitor general data attributes other than accesses - "mm/vmalloc: free unused pages on vrealloc() shrink" (Shivam Kalra) Implement the TODO in vrealloc() to unmap and free unused pages when shrinking across a page boundary - "mm/damon: documentation and comment fixes" (niecheng) - "remove mmap_action success, error hooks" (Lorenzo Stoakes) Eliminate custom hooks from mmap_action by removing the problematic success_hook which allowed drivers to improperly access uninitialized VMAs. It replaces the error_hook with a simple error-code field and updates the memory char driver accordingly - "mm/damon: minor improvements for code readability and tests" (SeongJae Park) - "mm/damon: fix macro arguments and clarify quota goals doc" (Maksym Shcherba) - "userfaultfd: merge fs/userfaultfd.c into mm/userfaultfd.c" (Mike Rapoport) - "mm/mglru: improve reclaim loop and dirty folio" (Kairui Song and others) Clean up and slightly improves MGLRU's reclaim loop and dirty writeback handling. Large performance improvements are measured - "use vma locks for proc/pid/{smaps|numa_maps} reads" (Suren Baghdasaryan) Use per-vma locks when reading /proc/pid/smaps and numa_maps similar to reduce contention on central mmap_lock - "refactors thpsize_shmem_enabled_store() and thpsize_shmem_enabled_show()" (Ran Xiaokai) Some cleanup work in the THP code - "selftests/memfd: fix compilation warnings" (Konstantin Khorenko) Fix a few build glitches in the memfd selftest code. - "memcg: shrink obj_stock_pcp and cache multiple objcgs" (Shakeel Butt) Resolve a 68% performance regression caused by NUMA-node cache thrashing around struct obj_stock_pcp by shrinking its existing fields and expanding it into a multi-slot array that caches up to five obj_cgroup pointers per CPU, allowing per-node variants of the same memcg to coexist within a single 64-byte cache line. - "zram: writeback fixes" (Sergey Senozhatsky) address a couple of unrelated zram writeback issues - "mm: switch THP shrinker to list_lru" (Johannes Weiner) Resolve NUMA-awareness issues and streamlines callsite interaction by refactoring and extending the list_lru API to completely replace the complex, open-coded deferred split queue for Transparent Huge Pages - "mm: improve large folio readahead for exec memory" (Usama Arif) Improve large-folio readahead on systems like 64K-page arm64 by preventing the mmap_miss check from permanently disabling target-oriented VM_EXEC readahead, and by generalizing the force_thp_readahead gate to support mappings with any usefully large maximum folio order under the cache cap. - "userfaultfd/pagemap: pre-existing fixes" (Kiryl Shutsemau) Fix a bunch of minor issues in the userfaultfd/pagemap, all of which were flagged by Sashiko review of proposed new material - "mm/sparse-vmemmap: Provide generic vmemmap_set_pmd() and vmemmap_check_pmd()" (Muchun Song) Provide generic versions of these two functions so the four arch-specific implementations can be removed. - "mm/swap, PM: hibernate: fix swapoff race in uswsusp by pinning swap device" (Youngjun Park) Address a uswsusp-vs-swapoff race and reduces the swap device reference taking/releasing frequency. - "mm/hmm: A fix and a selftest" (Dev Jain) * tag 'mm-stable-2026-06-18-09-26' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm: (321 commits) selftests/mm/hmm-tests: test pagemap reads of PMD device-private entries fs/proc/task_mmu: do not warn on seeing non-migration pmd entry lib/test_hmm: check alloc_page_vma() return value and handle OOM mm/compaction: cap compact_gap() at COMPACT_CLUSTER_MAX mm/swap: remove redundant swap device reference in alloc/free mm/swap, PM: hibernate: fix swapoff race in uswsusp by pinning swap device mm/filemap: use folio_next_index() for start vmalloc: fix NULL pointer dereference in is_vm_area_hugepages() sparc/mm: drop vmemmap_check_pmd helper and use generic code loongarch/mm: drop vmemmap_check_pmd helper and use generic code riscv/mm: drop vmemmap_pmd helpers and use generic code arm64/mm: drop vmemmap_pmd helpers and use generic code mm/sparse-vmemmap: provide generic vmemmap_set_pmd() and vmemmap_check_pmd() rust: page: mark Page::nid as inline userfaultfd: build __VMA_UFFD_FLAGS from config-gated masks userfaultfd: gate must_wait writability check on pte_present() mm/huge_memory: preserve pmd_swp_uffd_wp on device-private PMD downgrade fs/proc/task_mmu: fix hugetlb self-deadlock in pagemap_scan_pte_hole() fs/proc/task_mmu: use huge_page_size() in pagemap_scan_hugetlb_entry() fs/proc/task_mmu: fix make_uffd_wp_huge_pte() prot-update race ...

mm/slab: do not init any kfence objects on allocation

2026-06-15T08:50:00+00:00

When init (zeroing) on allocation is requested, for kmalloc() we generally have to zero the full object size even if a smaller size is requested, in order to provide krealloc()'s __GFP_ZERO guarantees. When we end up allocating a kfence object, kfence performs the zeroing on its own because it has its own redzone beyond the requested size. Thus slab_post_alloc_hook() has an 'init' parameter which has to be evaluated in all callers (via slab_want_init_on_alloc()) and should be false for kfence allocations. For kfence allocations in slab_alloc_node() this is achieved by subtly skipping over the slab_want_init_on_alloc() call. Other callers (i.e. kmem_cache_alloc_bulk_noprof()) however evaluate it unconditionally even if they do end up with a kfence allocation. This is only subtly not a problem, as those are not kmalloc allocations and thus the "requested size" equals s->object_size and thus it cannot interfere with kfence's redzone. There's just a unnecessary double zeroing (in both kfence and slab_post_alloc_hook()), but it's all very fragile and contradicts the comment in kfence_guarded_alloc(). Remove this subtlety and simplify the code by eliminating the init parameter from slab_post_alloc_hook() and make it call slab_want_init_on_alloc() itself. Instead add a is_kfence_address() check before performing the memset, which will start doing the right thing for all callers of slab_post_alloc_hook(). This potentially adds overhead of the is_kfence_address() check to allocation hotpath, but that one is designed to be as small as possible, and it's only evaluated if zeroing is about to happen. This means (aside from init_on_alloc hardening) only for __GFP_ZERO allocations, and the zeroing itself comes with an overhead likely larger than the added check. While at it, refactor the handling of evaluating when KASAN does the init instead of SLUB, with no intended functional changes. A non-functional change is that we don't pass kasan_init as true to kasan_slab_alloc() if kasan has no integrated init, but then the value is ignored anyway, so it's theoretically more correct. Thanks to Harry Yoo for the initial refactoring attempt, and for updated comments that are used here. Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260610-slab_alloc_flags-v2-2-7190909db118@kernel.org Reviewed-by: Harry Yoo (Oracle) Reviewed-by: Suren Baghdasaryan Reviewed-by: Hao Li Reviewed-by: Marco Elver Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)

Merge branch 'slab/for-7.2/alloc_token' into slab/for-next

2026-06-12T09:25:12+00:00

Merge series "slab: support for compiler-assisted type-based slab cache partitioning" from Marco Elver. From the cover letter [6]: Rework the general infrastructure around RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES into more flexible KMALLOC_PARTITION_CACHES, with the former being a partitioning mode of the latter. Introduce a new mode, KMALLOC_PARTITION_TYPED, which leverages a feature available in Clang 22 and later, called "allocation tokens" via __builtin_infer_alloc_token() [1]. Unlike KMALLOC_PARTITION_RANDOM (formerly RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES), this mode deterministically assigns a slab cache to an allocation of type T, regardless of allocation site. The builtin __builtin_infer_alloc_token(, ...) instructs the compiler to infer an allocation type from arguments commonly passed to memory-allocating functions and returns a type-derived token ID. The implementation passes kmalloc-args to the builtin: the compiler performs best-effort type inference, and then recognizes common patterns such as `kmalloc(sizeof(T), ...)`, `kmalloc(sizeof(T) * n, ...)`, but also `(T *)kmalloc(...)`. Where the compiler fails to infer a type the fallback token (default: 0) is chosen. Note: kmalloc_obj(..) APIs fix the pattern how size and result type are expressed, and therefore ensures there's not much drift in which patterns the compiler needs to recognize. Specifically, kmalloc_obj() and friends expand to `(TYPE *)KMALLOC(__obj_size, GFP)`, which the compiler recognizes via the cast to TYPE*. Clang's default token ID calculation is described as [1]: typehashpointersplit: This mode assigns a token ID based on the hash of the allocated type's name, where the top half ID-space is reserved for types that contain pointers and the bottom half for types that do not contain pointers. Separating pointer-containing objects from pointerless objects and data allocations can help mitigate certain classes of memory corruption exploits [2]: attackers who gains a buffer overflow on a primitive buffer cannot use it to directly corrupt pointers or other critical metadata in an object residing in a different, isolated heap region. It is important to note that heap isolation strategies offer a best-effort approach, and do not provide a 100% security guarantee, albeit achievable at relatively low performance cost. Note that this also does not prevent cross-cache attacks: while waiting for future features like SLAB_VIRTUAL [3] to provide physical page isolation, this feature should be deployed alongside SHUFFLE_PAGE_ALLOCATOR and init_on_free=1 to mitigate cross-cache attacks and page-reuse attacks as much as possible today. With all that, my kernel (x86 defconfig) shows me a histogram of slab cache object distribution per /proc/slabinfo (after boot): kmalloc-part-15 1465 ++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-14 2988 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-13 1656 ++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-12 1045 ++++++++++ kmalloc-part-11 1697 ++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-10 1489 ++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-09 965 +++++++++ kmalloc-part-08 710 +++++++ kmalloc-part-07 100 + kmalloc-part-06 217 ++ kmalloc-part-05 105 + kmalloc-part-04 4047 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-03 183 + kmalloc-part-02 283 ++ kmalloc-part-01 316 +++ kmalloc 1422 ++++++++++++++ The above /proc/slabinfo snapshot shows me there are 6673 allocated objects (slabs 00 - 07) that the compiler claims contain no pointers or it was unable to infer the type of, and 12015 objects that contain pointers (slabs 08 - 15). On a whole, this looks relatively sane. Additionally, when I compile my kernel with -Rpass=alloc-token, which provides diagnostics where (after dead-code elimination) type inference failed, I see 186 allocation sites where the compiler failed to identify a type (down from 966 when I sent the RFC [4]). Some initial review confirms these are mostly variable sized buffers, but also include structs with trailing flexible length arrays. Link: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AllocToken.html [1] Link: https://blog.dfsec.com/ios/2025/05/30/blasting-past-ios-18/ [2] Link: https://lwn.net/Articles/944647/ [3] Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250825154505.1558444-1-elver@google.com/ [4] Link: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-a-framework-for-allocator-partitioning-hints/87434 [5] Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260511200136.3201646-1-elver@google.com/ [6]

mm/slab: improve kmem_cache_alloc_bulk

2026-06-03T16:20:43+00:00

The kmem_cache_alloc_bulk return value is weird. It returns the number of allocated objects, but that must always be 0 or the requested number based on the implementations and the handling in the callers, but that assumption is not actually documented anywhere, which confuses automated review tools. Fix this by returning a bool if the allocation succeeded and adding a kerneldoc comment explaining the API. [rob.clark@oss.qualcomm.com: fixups in msm_iommu_pagetable_prealloc_allocate() ] Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Reviewed-by: Alexander Lobakin # skbuff Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260528093437.2519248-2-hch@lst.de Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)

kfence: fix KASAN HW tags bypass via runtime sample_interval change

2026-05-29T04:24:46+00:00

If a user writes a non-zero value to the sample_interval module parameter at runtime, the missing KASAN HW tags check in the late init path allows KFENCE to be enabled alongside KASAN HW tags, bypassing the boot restriction. This patch adds the missing check to param_set_sample_interval() to reject the parameter change if KASAN HW tags are enabled. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260507095237.741017-1-glider@google.com Fixes: 09833d99db36 ("mm/kfence: disable KFENCE upon KASAN HW tags enablement") Signed-off-by: Alexander Potapenko Cc: Marco Elver Cc: Greg Thelen Cc: Roman Gushchin Cc: Pimyn Girgis Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/kfence: use special gfp_t format specifier

2026-05-29T04:04:52+00:00

%pGg produces nice readable output and decouples the format string from the size of gfp_t. Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260326-gfp64-v2-3-d916021cecdf@google.com Signed-off-by: Brendan Jackman Cc: Alexander Potapenko Cc: Allison Collins Cc: Allison Henderson Cc: Dave Airlie Cc: David S. Miller Cc: Dmitry Vyukov Cc: Eric Dumazet Cc: Jakub Kacinski Cc: Jakub Kicinski Cc: Maarten Lankhorst Cc: Marco Elver Cc: Maxime Ripard Cc: Paolo Abeni Cc: Simon Horman Cc: Stanislaw Gruszka Cc: Thomas Zimemrmann Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

slab: support for compiler-assisted type-based slab cache partitioning

2026-05-14T08:44:09+00:00

Rework the general infrastructure around RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES into more flexible KMALLOC_PARTITION_CACHES, with the former being a partitioning mode of the latter. Introduce a new mode, KMALLOC_PARTITION_TYPED, which leverages a feature available in Clang 22 and later, called "allocation tokens" via __builtin_infer_alloc_token() [1]. Unlike KMALLOC_PARTITION_RANDOM (formerly RANDOM_KMALLOC_CACHES), this mode deterministically assigns a slab cache to an allocation of type T, regardless of allocation site. The builtin __builtin_infer_alloc_token(, ...) instructs the compiler to infer an allocation type from arguments commonly passed to memory-allocating functions and returns a type-derived token ID. The implementation passes kmalloc-args to the builtin: the compiler performs best-effort type inference, and then recognizes common patterns such as `kmalloc(sizeof(T), ...)`, `kmalloc(sizeof(T) * n, ...)`, but also `(T *)kmalloc(...)`. Where the compiler fails to infer a type the fallback token (default: 0) is chosen. Note: kmalloc_obj(..) APIs fix the pattern how size and result type are expressed, and therefore ensures there's not much drift in which patterns the compiler needs to recognize. Specifically, kmalloc_obj() and friends expand to `(TYPE *)KMALLOC(__obj_size, GFP)`, which the compiler recognizes via the cast to TYPE*. Clang's default token ID calculation is described as [1]: typehashpointersplit: This mode assigns a token ID based on the hash of the allocated type's name, where the top half ID-space is reserved for types that contain pointers and the bottom half for types that do not contain pointers. Separating pointer-containing objects from pointerless objects and data allocations can help mitigate certain classes of memory corruption exploits [2]: attackers who gains a buffer overflow on a primitive buffer cannot use it to directly corrupt pointers or other critical metadata in an object residing in a different, isolated heap region. It is important to note that heap isolation strategies offer a best-effort approach, and do not provide a 100% security guarantee, albeit achievable at relatively low performance cost. Note that this also does not prevent cross-cache attacks: while waiting for future features like SLAB_VIRTUAL [3] to provide physical page isolation, this feature should be deployed alongside SHUFFLE_PAGE_ALLOCATOR and init_on_free=1 to mitigate cross-cache attacks and page-reuse attacks as much as possible today. With all that, my kernel (x86 defconfig) shows me a histogram of slab cache object distribution per /proc/slabinfo (after boot): kmalloc-part-15 1465 ++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-14 2988 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-13 1656 ++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-12 1045 ++++++++++ kmalloc-part-11 1697 ++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-10 1489 ++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-09 965 +++++++++ kmalloc-part-08 710 +++++++ kmalloc-part-07 100 + kmalloc-part-06 217 ++ kmalloc-part-05 105 + kmalloc-part-04 4047 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ kmalloc-part-03 183 + kmalloc-part-02 283 ++ kmalloc-part-01 316 +++ kmalloc 1422 ++++++++++++++ The above /proc/slabinfo snapshot shows me there are 6673 allocated objects (slabs 00 - 07) that the compiler claims contain no pointers or it was unable to infer the type of, and 12015 objects that contain pointers (slabs 08 - 15). On a whole, this looks relatively sane. Additionally, when I compile my kernel with -Rpass=alloc-token, which provides diagnostics where (after dead-code elimination) type inference failed, I see 186 allocation sites where the compiler failed to identify a type (down from 966 when I sent the RFC [4]). Some initial review confirms these are mostly variable sized buffers, but also include structs with trailing flexible length arrays. Link: https://clang.llvm.org/docs/AllocToken.html [1] Link: https://blog.dfsec.com/ios/2025/05/30/blasting-past-ios-18/ [2] Link: https://lwn.net/Articles/944647/ [3] Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250825154505.1558444-1-elver@google.com/ [4] Link: https://discourse.llvm.org/t/rfc-a-framework-for-allocator-partitioning-hints/87434 Acked-by: GONG Ruiqi Co-developed-by: Harry Yoo (Oracle) Signed-off-by: Harry Yoo (Oracle) Signed-off-by: Marco Elver Reviewed-by: Harry Yoo (Oracle) Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260511200136.3201646-1-elver@google.com Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE)

Merge tag 'memblock-v7.1-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rppt/memblock

2026-04-18T18:29:14+00:00

Pull memblock updates from Mike Rapoport: - improve debuggability of reserve_mem kernel parameter handling with print outs in case of a failure and debugfs info showing what was actually reserved - Make memblock_free_late() and free_reserved_area() use the same core logic for freeing the memory to buddy and ensure it takes care of updating memblock arrays when ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK is enabled. * tag 'memblock-v7.1-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rppt/memblock: x86/alternative: delay freeing of smp_locks section memblock: warn when freeing reserved memory before memory map is initialized memblock, treewide: make memblock_free() handle late freeing memblock: make free_reserved_area() update memblock if ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK=y memblock: extract page freeing from free_reserved_area() into a helper memblock: make free_reserved_area() more robust mm: move free_reserved_area() to mm/memblock.c powerpc: opal-core: pair alloc_pages_exact() with free_pages_exact() powerpc: fadump: pair alloc_pages_exact() with free_pages_exact() memblock: reserve_mem: fix end caclulation in reserve_mem_release_by_name() memblock: move reserve_bootmem_range() to memblock.c and make it static memblock: Add reserve_mem debugfs info memblock: Print out errors on reserve_mem parser