Re: [PATCH 4/5] mm, memcg: avoid possible NULL pointer dereferencing in mem_cgroup_init()

[Roman Gushchin]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2021 at 08:57:54PM +0800, Miaohe Lin wrote:
> rtpn might be NULL in very rare case. We have better to check it before
> dereferencing it. Since memcg can live with NULL rb_tree_per_node in
> soft_limit_tree, warn this case and continue.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  mm/memcontrol.c | 2 ++
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/memcontrol.c b/mm/memcontrol.c
> index 5b4592d1e0f2..70a32174e7c4 100644
> --- a/mm/memcontrol.c
> +++ b/mm/memcontrol.c
> @@ -7109,6 +7109,8 @@ static int __init mem_cgroup_init(void)
>  		rtpn = kzalloc_node(sizeof(*rtpn), GFP_KERNEL,
>  				    node_online(node) ? node : NUMA_NO_NODE);
>  
> +		if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!rtpn))
> +			continue;

I also really doubt that it makes any sense to continue in this case.
If this allocations fails (at the very beginning of the system's life, it's an __init function),
something is terribly wrong and panic'ing on a NULL-pointer dereference sounds like
a perfect choice.

Is this a real world problem? Do I miss something?