Re: [PATCH v2] fs/select: add vmalloc fallback for select(2)

[Eric Dumazet]

On Thu, 2016-09-22 at 18:43 +0200, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> The select(2) syscall performs a kmalloc(size, GFP_KERNEL) where size grows
> with the number of fds passed. We had a customer report page allocation
> failures of order-4 for this allocation. This is a costly order, so it might
> easily fail, as the VM expects such allocation to have a lower-order fallback.
> 
> Such trivial fallback is vmalloc(), as the memory doesn't have to be
> physically contiguous. Also the allocation is temporary for the duration of the
> syscall, so it's unlikely to stress vmalloc too much.

vmalloc() uses a vmap_area_lock spinlock, and TLB flushes.

So I guess allowing vmalloc() being called from an innocent application
doing a select() might be dangerous, especially if this select() happens
thousands of time per second.