linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 06/23] mm: introduce BPF struct ops for OOM handling

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Message-ID: <87ecnusq7m.fsf@linux.dev>
Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2026 09:20:13 -0800
From: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@...ux.dev>
To: Matt Bobrowski <mattbobrowski@...gle.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
  linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,  Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
  Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,  Michal Hocko
 <mhocko@...nel.org>,  Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@...ux.dev>,  Johannes
 Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,  Andrii Nakryiko <andrii@...nel.org>,  JP
 Kobryn <inwardvessel@...il.com>,  linux-mm@...ck.org,
  cgroups@...r.kernel.org,  bpf@...r.kernel.org,  Martin KaFai Lau
 <martin.lau@...nel.org>,  Song Liu <song@...nel.org>,  Kumar Kartikeya
 Dwivedi <memxor@...il.com>,  Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 06/23] mm: introduce BPF struct ops for OOM handling

Matt Bobrowski <mattbobrowski@...gle.com> writes:

> On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 04:17:09PM -0700, Roman Gushchin wrote:
>> Introduce a bpf struct ops for implementing custom OOM handling
>> policies.
>>
>> ...
>>
>> +#ifdef CONFIG_MEMCG
>> +	/* Find the nearest bpf_oom_ops traversing the cgroup tree upwards */
>> +	for (memcg = oc->memcg; memcg; memcg = parent_mem_cgroup(memcg)) {
>> +		bpf_oom_ops = READ_ONCE(memcg->bpf_oom);
>> +		if (!bpf_oom_ops)
>> +			continue;
>> +
>> +		/* Call BPF OOM handler */
>> +		ret = bpf_ops_handle_oom(bpf_oom_ops, memcg, oc);
>> +		if (ret && oc->bpf_memory_freed)
>> +			goto exit;
>
> I have a question about the semantics of oc->bpf_memory_freed.
>
> Currently, it seems this flag is used to indicate that a BPF OOM
> program has made forward progress by freeing some memory (i.e.,
> bpf_oom_kill_process()), but if it's not set, it falls back to the
> default in-kernel OOM killer.
>
> However, what if forward progress in some contexts means not freeing
> memory? For example, in some bespoke container environments, the
> policy might be to catch the OOM event and handle it gracefully by
> raising the memory.limit_in_bytes on the affected memcg. In this kind
> of resizing scenario, no memory would be freed, but the OOM event
> would effectively be resolved.

I'd say we need to introduce a special kfunc which increases the limit
and sets bpf_memory_freed. I think it's important to maintain safety
guarantee, so that a faulty bpf program is not leading to the system
being deadlocked on memory.

Thanks!