6.12-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know.
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From: Raphael S. Carvalho raphaelsc@scylladb.com
commit 182db972c9568dc530b2f586a2f82dfd039d9f2a upstream.
original report: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAKhLTr1UL3ePTpYjXOx2AJfNk8Ku2EdcEfu+CH1sf3Asr=B...
When doing buffered writes with FGP_NOWAIT, under memory pressure, the system returned ENOMEM despite there being plenty of available memory, to be reclaimed from page cache. The user space used io_uring interface, which in turn submits I/O with FGP_NOWAIT (the fast path).
retsnoop pointed to iomap_get_folio:
00:34:16.180612 -> 00:34:16.180651 TID/PID 253786/253721 (reactor-1/combined_tests):
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76 do_syscall_64+0x82 __do_sys_io_uring_enter+0x265 io_submit_sqes+0x209 io_issue_sqe+0x5b io_write+0xdd xfs_file_buffered_write+0x84 iomap_file_buffered_write+0x1a6 32us [-ENOMEM] iomap_write_begin+0x408 iter=&{.inode=0xffff8c67aa031138,.len=4096,.flags=33,.iomap={.addr=0xffffffffffffffff,.length=4096,.type=1,.flags=3,.bdev=0x… pos=0 len=4096 foliop=0xffffb32c296b7b80 ! 4us [-ENOMEM] iomap_get_folio iter=&{.inode=0xffff8c67aa031138,.len=4096,.flags=33,.iomap={.addr=0xffffffffffffffff,.length=4096,.type=1,.flags=3,.bdev=0x… pos=0 len=4096
This is likely a regression caused by 66dabbb65d67 ("mm: return an ERR_PTR from __filemap_get_folio"), which moved error handling from io_map_get_folio() to __filemap_get_folio(), but broke FGP_NOWAIT handling, so ENOMEM is being escaped to user space. Had it correctly returned -EAGAIN with NOWAIT, either io_uring or user space itself would be able to retry the request.
It's not enough to patch io_uring since the iomap interface is the one responsible for it, and pwritev2(RWF_NOWAIT) and AIO interfaces must return the proper error too.
The patch was tested with scylladb test suite (its original reproducer), and the tests all pass now when memory is pressured.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250224143700.23035-1-raphaelsc@scylladb.com Fixes: 66dabbb65d67 ("mm: return an ERR_PTR from __filemap_get_folio") Signed-off-by: Raphael S. Carvalho raphaelsc@scylladb.com Reviewed-by: Christoph Hellwig hch@lst.de Reviewed-by: Dave Chinner dchinner@redhat.com Cc: "Darrick J. Wong" djwong@kernel.org Cc: Matthew Wilcow (Oracle) willy@infradead.org Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman gregkh@linuxfoundation.org --- mm/filemap.c | 13 ++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
--- a/mm/filemap.c +++ b/mm/filemap.c @@ -1966,8 +1966,19 @@ no_page:
if (err == -EEXIST) goto repeat; - if (err) + if (err) { + /* + * When NOWAIT I/O fails to allocate folios this could + * be due to a nonblocking memory allocation and not + * because the system actually is out of memory. + * Return -EAGAIN so that there caller retries in a + * blocking fashion instead of propagating -ENOMEM + * to the application. + */ + if ((fgp_flags & FGP_NOWAIT) && err == -ENOMEM) + err = -EAGAIN; return ERR_PTR(err); + } /* * filemap_add_folio locks the page, and for mmap * we expect an unlocked page.