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authorJoshua Hahn <joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com>2025-12-01 10:07:38 -0800
committerMike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>2025-12-04 19:40:25 +0200
commit83c8f7b5e194eaf3fb268c513e23e23e892de8ed (patch)
tree3eb3aa6a59d0e0559ac986d4f6d8f46a87a724ac
parentac3fd01e4c1efce8f2c054cdeb2ddd2fc0fb150d (diff)
mm/mm_init: Introduce a boot parameter for check_pages
Use-after-free and double-free bugs can be very difficult to track down. The kernel is good at tracking these and preventing bad pages from being used/created through simple checks gated behind "check_pages_enabled". Currently, the only ways to enable this flag is by building with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, or as a side effect of other checks such as init_on_{alloc, free}, page_poisoning, or debug_pagealloc among others. These solutions are powerful, but may often be too coarse in balancing the performance vs. safety that a user may want, particularly in latency-sensitive production environments. Introduce a new boot parameter "check_pages", which enables page checking with no other side effects. It takes kstrbool-able inputs as an argument (i.e. 0/1, true/false, on/off, ...). This patch is backwards-compatible; setting CONFIG_DEBUG_VM still enables page checking. Acked-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@arm.com> Signed-off-by: Joshua Hahn <joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com> Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251201180739.2330474-1-joshua.hahnjy@gmail.com Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt8
-rw-r--r--mm/mm_init.c10
2 files changed, 17 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index 6c42061ca20e..acdc7fbdecac 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -669,6 +669,14 @@
nokmem -- Disable kernel memory accounting.
nobpf -- Disable BPF memory accounting.
+ check_pages= [MM,EARLY] Enable sanity checking of pages after
+ allocations / before freeing. This adds checks to catch
+ double-frees, use-after-frees, and other sources of
+ page corruption by inspecting page internals (flags,
+ mapcount/refcount, memcg_data, etc.).
+ Format: { "0" | "1" }
+ Default: 0 (1 if CONFIG_DEBUG_VM is set)
+
checkreqprot= [SELINUX] Set initial checkreqprot flag value.
Format: { "0" | "1" }
See security/selinux/Kconfig help text.
diff --git a/mm/mm_init.c b/mm/mm_init.c
index 7712d887b696..220b7c6b5fb2 100644
--- a/mm/mm_init.c
+++ b/mm/mm_init.c
@@ -2525,6 +2525,14 @@ early_param("init_on_free", early_init_on_free);
DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, check_pages_enabled);
+static bool check_pages_enabled_early __initdata;
+
+static int __init early_check_pages(char *buf)
+{
+ return kstrtobool(buf, &check_pages_enabled_early);
+}
+early_param("check_pages", early_check_pages);
+
/*
* Enable static keys related to various memory debugging and hardening options.
* Some override others, and depend on early params that are evaluated in the
@@ -2534,7 +2542,7 @@ DEFINE_STATIC_KEY_MAYBE(CONFIG_DEBUG_VM, check_pages_enabled);
static void __init mem_debugging_and_hardening_init(void)
{
bool page_poisoning_requested = false;
- bool want_check_pages = false;
+ bool want_check_pages = check_pages_enabled_early;
#ifdef CONFIG_PAGE_POISONING
/*