Re: [PATCH] mm/kmsan: Fix kmsan kmalloc hook when no stack depots are allocated yet

[Alexander Potapenko]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 1:56 PM Aleksei Nikiforov
<aleksei.nikiforov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> If no stack depot is allocated yet,
> due to masking out __GFP_RECLAIM flags
> kmsan called from kmalloc cannot allocate stack depot.
> kmsan fails to record origin and report issues.
>
> Reusing flags from kmalloc without modifying them should be safe for kmsan.
> For example, such chain of calls is possible:
> test_uninit_kmalloc -> kmalloc -> __kmalloc_cache_noprof ->
> slab_alloc_node -> slab_post_alloc_hook ->
> kmsan_slab_alloc -> kmsan_internal_poison_memory.
>
> Only when it is called in a context without flags present
> should __GFP_RECLAIM flags be masked.
>
> With this change all kmsan tests start working reliably.

I think this makes sense. The whole __GFP_RECLAIM filtering was mostly
for poisoning local variables, so we don't need it for allocation
hooks.

It is still possible to pass __GFP_RECLAIM to kmsan_poison_memory(), but:
- it is actually not used in the entire codebase;
- the documentation clearly states that kmsan_poison_memory() will be
allocating memory, so one should be mindful of passing wrong GFP
flags.

> Signed-off-by: Aleksei Nikiforov <aleksei.nikiforov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Alexander Potapenko <glider@xxxxxxxxxx>