Add documentation for the new vm.panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure sysctl, describing the three categories of failures that trigger a panic and noting which kernel page types are not yet covered.
Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <[email protected]> --- Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst | 65 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 65 insertions(+) diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/vm.rst index 97e12359775c9..f118ec5cd1fad 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 +926,70 @@ 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 a 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. + +When enabled, this sysctl triggers a panic on three categories of +unrecoverable failures: reserved kernel pages, non-buddy kernel pages +with zero refcount (e.g. tail pages of high-order allocations), and +pages whose state cannot be classified as recoverable. + +Note that some kernel page types — such as slab objects, vmalloc +allocations, kernel stacks, and page tables — share a failure path +with transient refcount races and are not currently covered by this +option. I.e, do not panic when not confident of the page status. + +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. + +Use cases +--------- + +This option is most useful in environments where unattributed crashes +are expensive to debug or where data integrity must take precedence +over availability: + +* Large fleets, where multi-bit ECC errors on kernel pages are observed + regularly and post-mortem analysis of an unrelated downstream crash + (often seconds to minutes after the original error) consumes + significant engineering effort. + +* Systems configured with kdump, where panicking at the moment of the + hardware error produces a vmcore that still contains the faulting + address, the affected page state, and the originating MCE/GHES + record — context that is typically lost by the time a delayed crash + occurs. + +* High-availability clusters that rely on fast, deterministic node + failure for failover, and prefer an immediate panic over silent data + corruption propagating to replicas or persistent storage. + +* Kernel and platform developers reproducing hwpoison issues with + tools such as ``mce-inject`` or error-injection debugfs interfaces, + where panicking on the unrecoverable path makes regressions + immediately visible instead of surfacing as later, unrelated + failures. + += ===================================================================== +0 Try to continue operation (default). +1 Panic immediately. If the ``panic`` sysctl is also non-zero then the + machine will be rebooted. += ===================================================================== + +Example:: + + echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/panic_on_unrecoverable_memory_failure + + percpu_pagelist_high_fraction ============================= -- 2.52.0
