Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/page_alloc: fix initialization of tags of the huge zero folio with init_on_free

From: Lance Yang <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Apr 2026 15:46:30 +0800

On Mon, Apr 20, 2026 at 11:16:46PM +0200, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:
>__GFP_ZEROTAGS semantics are currently a bit weird, but effectively this
>flag is only ever set alongside __GFP_ZERO and __GFP_SKIP_KASAN.
>
>If we run with init_on_free, we will zero out pages during
>__free_pages_prepare(), to skip zeroing on the allocation path.
>
>However, when allocating with __GFP_ZEROTAG set, post_alloc_hook() will
>consequently not only skip clearing page content, but also skip
>clearing tag memory.
>
>Not clearing tags through __GFP_ZEROTAGS is irrelevant for most pages that
>will get mapped to user space through set_pte_at() later: set_pte_at() and
>friends will detect that the tags have not been initialized yet
>(PG_mte_tagged not set), and initialize them.
>
>However, for the huge zero folio, which will be mapped through a PMD
>marked as special, this initialization will not be performed, ending up
>exposing whatever tags were still set for the pages.
>
>The docs (Documentation/arch/arm64/memory-tagging-extension.rst) state
>that allocation tags are set to 0 when a page is first mapped to user
>space. That no longer holds with the huge zero folio when init_on_free
>is enabled.
>
>Fix it by decoupling __GFP_ZEROTAGS from __GFP_ZERO, passing to
>tag_clear_highpages() whether we want to also clear page content.
>
>As we are touching the interface either way, just clean it up by
>only calling it when HW tags are enabled, dropping the return value, and
>dropping the common code stub.
>
>Reproduced with the huge zero folio by modifying the check_buffer_fill
>arm64/mte selftest to use a 2 MiB area, after making sure that pages have
>a non-0 tag set when freeing (note that, during boot, we will not
>actually initialize tags, but only set KASAN_TAG_KERNEL in the page
>flags).

Good catch!

I can reproduce it reliably with this small debug change:

---8<---
diff --git a/mm/huge_memory.c b/mm/huge_memory.c
index 970e077019b7..d5b6e2474f47 100644
--- a/mm/huge_memory.c
+++ b/mm/huge_memory.c
@@ -225,8 +225,7 @@ static bool get_huge_zero_folio(void)
        if (likely(atomic_inc_not_zero(&huge_zero_refcount)))
                return true;

-       zero_folio = folio_alloc((GFP_TRANSHUGE | __GFP_ZERO | __GFP_ZEROTAGS) &
-                                ~__GFP_MOVABLE,
+       zero_folio = folio_alloc(GFP_TRANSHUGE | __GFP_ZERO | __GFP_ZEROTAGS,
                        HPAGE_PMD_ORDER);
        if (!zero_folio) {
                count_vm_event(THP_ZERO_PAGE_ALLOC_FAILED);
---

That makes it much easier to hit. Userspace can seed tagged 2 MB folios,
but only as __GFP_MOVABLE.

The original huge zero folio allocation uses "& ~__GFP_MOVABLE", so it
will only reach these folios through fallback, which is hard to force
reliably from userspace :(

Will get back once testing is done :P

Cheers,
Lance