linux-kernel - [PATCH v2 3/3] Documentation: add documentation for MFD_MF_KEEP_UE

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Message-ID: <20251116013223.1557158-4-jiaqiyan@google.com>
Date: Sun, 16 Nov 2025 01:32:23 +0000
From: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@...gle.com>
To: nao.horiguchi@...il.com, linmiaohe@...wei.com, william.roche@...cle.com, 
	harry.yoo@...cle.com
Cc: tony.luck@...el.com, wangkefeng.wang@...wei.com, willy@...radead.org, 
	jane.chu@...cle.com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, osalvador@...e.de, 
	rientjes@...gle.com, duenwen@...gle.com, jthoughton@...gle.com, 
	jgg@...dia.com, ankita@...dia.com, peterx@...hat.com, 
	sidhartha.kumar@...cle.com, ziy@...dia.com, david@...hat.com, 
	dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com, muchun.song@...ux.dev, linux-mm@...ck.org, 
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, 
	Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@...gle.com>
Subject: [PATCH v2 3/3] Documentation: add documentation for MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED

Document its motivation, userspace API, behaviors, and limitations.

Signed-off-by: Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@...gle.com>
---
 Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst         |  1 +
 .../userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst          | 60 +++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 61 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
index b8c73be4fb112..d8c6977d9e67a 100644
--- a/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/index.rst
@@ -67,6 +67,7 @@ Everything else
    futex2
    perf_ring_buffer
    ntsync
+   mfd_mfr_policy
 
 .. only::  subproject and html
 
diff --git a/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..c5a25df39791a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/userspace-api/mfd_mfr_policy.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==================================================
+Userspace Memory Failure Recovery Policy via memfd
+==================================================
+
+:Author:
+    Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@...gle.com>
+
+
+Motivation
+==========
+
+When a userspace process is able to recover from memory failures (MF)
+caused by uncorrected memory error (UE) in the DIMM, especially when it is
+able to avoid consuming known UEs, keeping the memory page mapped and
+accessible is benifical to the owning process for a couple of reasons:
+
+- The memory pages affected by UE have a large smallest granularity, for
+  example 1G hugepage, but the actual corrupted amount of the page is only
+  several cachlines. Losing the entire hugepage of data is unacceptable to
+  the application.
+
+- In addition to keeping the data accessible, the application still wants
+  to access with a large page size for the fastest virtual-to-physical
+  translations.
+
+Memory failure recovery for 1G or larger HugeTLB is a good example. With
+memfd userspace process can control whether the kernel hard offlines its
+hugepages that backs the in-RAM file created by memfd.
+
+
+User API
+========
+
+``int memfd_create(const char *name, unsigned int flags)``
+
+``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``
+
+	When ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` bit is set in ``flags``, MF recovery
+	in the kernel does not hard offline memory due to UE until the
+	returned ``memfd`` is released. IOW, the HWPoison-ed memory remains
+	accessible via the returned ``memfd`` or the memory mapping created
+	with the returned ``memfd``. Note the affected memory will be
+	immediately isolated and prevented from future use once the memfd
+	is closed. By default ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` is not set, and
+	kernel hard offlines memory having UEs.
+
+Notes about the behavior and limitations
+
+- Even if the page affected by UE is kept, a portion of the (huge)page is
+  already lost due to hardware corruption, and the size of the portion
+  is the smallest page size that kernel uses to manages memory on the
+  architecture, i.e. PAGESIZE. Accessing a virtual address within any of
+  these parts results in a SIGBUS; accessing virtual address outside these
+  parts are good until it is corrupted by new memory error.
+
+- ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED`` currently only works for HugeTLB, so
+  ``MFD_HUGETLB`` must also be set when setting ``MFD_MF_KEEP_UE_MAPPED``.
+  Otherwise ``memfd_create`` returns EINVAL.
-- 
2.52.0.rc1.455.g30608eb744-goog