mm/page_alloc: document that alloc_pages_nolock() uses RCU

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The allocator interacts with cgroups which rely on RCU.  RCU does not work
everywhere, so the "any context" claim is slightly overstated here.

This should already be enforced by objtool, since this function is not
marked noinstr the x86 build should fail if you call it from a place where
RCU is not watching.  But, expecting readers to make that connection for
themselves seems a bit cruel (I don't think there is even any
documentation of what noinstr means at all, let alone the connection with
RCU).

Note this is not claiming that any cgroup code called from the allocator
would actually break if this restriction was violated, it could very well
be that there's no real way for the allocator to act on a cgroup that can
disappear concurrently.  But, since it's likely nobody has verified this
one way or another, better to just be safe and declare that RCU is
required.  Allocating from an RCU-unsafe context seems a bit crazy anyway.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260519-nolock-rcu-comment-v1-1-4a630c8794e5@google.com
Signed-off-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com>
Suggested-by: Junaid Shahid <junaids@google.com>
Acked-by: Harry Yoo (Oracle) <harry@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) <vbabka@kernel.org>
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>

...

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Brendan Jackman 2026-05-19 14:17:58 +00:00 • committed by Andrew Morton

parent d231522bf0

commit 47166f2199

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mm/page_alloc.c

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