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mm/memory_hotplug: document the signal_pending() check in offline_pag…
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…es()

Let's update the documentation that any signal is sufficient, and add a
comment that not only checking for fatal signals is historical baggage:
changing it now could break existing user space.  although unlikely.

For example, when an app provides a custom SIGALRM handler and triggers
memory offlining, the timeout cmd would no longer stop memory offlining,
because SIGALRM would no longer be considered a fatal signal.

Note that using signal_pending() instead of fatal_signal_pending() is
an anti-pattern, but slowly deprecating that behavior to eventually
change it in the far future is probably not worth the effort.  If this
ever becomes relevant for user-space, we might want to rethink.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230711174050.603820-1-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Oscar Salvador <osalvador@suse.de>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
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David Hildenbrand authored and Andrew Morton committed Aug 18, 2023
1 parent d036688 commit de7cb03
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion Documentation/admin-guide/mm/memory-hotplug.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -669,7 +669,7 @@ when still encountering permanently unmovable pages within ZONE_MOVABLE
(-> BUG), memory offlining will keep retrying until it eventually succeeds.

When offlining is triggered from user space, the offlining context can be
terminated by sending a fatal signal. A timeout based offlining can easily be
terminated by sending a signal. A timeout based offlining can easily be
implemented via::

% timeout $TIMEOUT offline_block | failure_handling
5 changes: 5 additions & 0 deletions mm/memory_hotplug.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -1843,6 +1843,11 @@ int __ref offline_pages(unsigned long start_pfn, unsigned long nr_pages,
do {
pfn = start_pfn;
do {
/*
* Historically we always checked for any signal and
* can't limit it to fatal signals without eventually
* breaking user space.
*/
if (signal_pending(current)) {
ret = -EINTR;
reason = "signal backoff";
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