linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3] mm/page_alloc: clear page->private in free_pages

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Message-ID: <cbc3b5b3-09b5-4e3c-99f0-a1f67582afff@kernel.org>
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 2026 23:02:27 +0100
From: "David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@...nel.org>
To: Mikhail Gavrilov <mikhail.v.gavrilov@...il.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org
Cc: akpm@...ux-foundation.org, vbabka@...e.cz, surenb@...gle.com,
 mhocko@...e.com, jackmanb@...gle.com, hannes@...xchg.org, ziy@...dia.com,
 npiggin@...il.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, kasong@...cent.com,
 hughd@...gle.com, chrisl@...nel.org, ryncsn@...il.com,
 stable@...r.kernel.org, willy@...radead.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] mm/page_alloc: clear page->private in
 free_pages_prepare()

On 2/7/26 18:36, Mikhail Gavrilov wrote:

Thanks!

> Several subsystems (slub, shmem, ttm, etc.) use page->private but don't
> clear it before freeing pages. When these pages are later allocated as
> high-order pages and split via split_page(), tail pages retain stale
> page->private values.
> 
> This causes a use-after-free in the swap subsystem. The swap code uses
> page->private to track swap count continuations, assuming freshly
> allocated pages have page->private == 0. When stale values are present,
> swap_count_continued() incorrectly assumes the continuation list is valid
> and iterates over uninitialized page->lru containing LIST_POISON values,
> causing a crash:
> 
>    KASAN: maybe wild-memory-access in range [0xdead000000000100-0xdead000000000107]
>    RIP: 0010:__do_sys_swapoff+0x1151/0x1860
> 
> Fix this by clearing page->private in free_pages_prepare(), ensuring all
> freed pages have clean state regardless of previous use.

I could have sworn we discussed something like that already in the past.

I recall that freeing pages with page->private set was allowed. Although
I once wondered whether we should actually change that.

> 
> Fixes: 3b8000ae185c ("mm/vmalloc: huge vmalloc backing pages should be split rather than compound")
> Cc: stable@...r.kernel.org
> Suggested-by: Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>
> Acked-by: Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>
> Signed-off-by: Mikhail Gavrilov <mikhail.v.gavrilov@...il.com>
> ---

Next time, please don't send patches as reply to another thread; that
way it can easily get lost in a bigger thread.

You want to get peoples attention :)

>   mm/page_alloc.c | 1 +
>   1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
> index cbf758e27aa2..24ac34199f95 100644
> --- a/mm/page_alloc.c
> +++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
> @@ -1430,6 +1430,7 @@ __always_inline bool free_pages_prepare(struct page *page,
>   
>   	page_cpupid_reset_last(page);
>   	page->flags.f &= ~PAGE_FLAGS_CHECK_AT_PREP;
> +	page->private = 0;

Should we be using set_page_private()? It's a bit inconsistent :)

I wonder, if it's really just the split_page() problem, why not
handle it there, where we already iterate over all ("tail") pages?

diff --git a/mm/page_alloc.c b/mm/page_alloc.c
index cbf758e27aa2..cbbcfdf3ed26 100644
--- a/mm/page_alloc.c
+++ b/mm/page_alloc.c
@@ -3122,8 +3122,10 @@ void split_page(struct page *page, unsigned int order)
         VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(PageCompound(page), page);
         VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(!page_count(page), page);
  
-       for (i = 1; i < (1 << order); i++)
+       for (i = 1; i < (1 << order); i++) {
                 set_page_refcounted(page + i);
+               set_page_private(page, 0);
+       }
         split_page_owner(page, order, 0);
         pgalloc_tag_split(page_folio(page), order, 0);
         split_page_memcg(page, order);


But then I thought about "what does actually happen during an folio split".

We had a check in __split_folio_to_order() that got removed in 4265d67e405a, for some
undocumented reason (and the patch got merged with 0 tags :( ). I assume because with zone-device
there was a way to now got ->private properly set. But we removed the safety check for
all other folios.

-               /*
-                * page->private should not be set in tail pages. Fix up and warn once
-                * if private is unexpectedly set.
-                */
-               if (unlikely(new_folio->private)) {
-                       VM_WARN_ON_ONCE_PAGE(true, new_head);
-                       new_folio->private = NULL;
-               }


I would have thought that we could have triggered that check easily before. Why didn't we?

Who would have cleared the private field of tail pages?

@Zi Yan, any idea why the folio splitting code wouldn't have revealed a similar problem?

-- 
Cheers,

David