angler-fishThe Vulnerability History Project

fs/seq_file: fallback to vmalloc allocation

      There are a couple of seq_files which use the single_open() interface.
This interface requires that the whole output must fit into a single
buffer.

E.g.  for /proc/stat allocation failures have been observed because an
order-4 memory allocation failed due to memory fragmentation.  In such
situations reading /proc/stat is not possible anymore.

Therefore change the seq_file code to fallback to vmalloc allocations
which will usually result in a couple of order-0 allocations and hence
also work if memory is fragmented.

For reference a call trace where reading from /proc/stat failed:

  sadc: page allocation failure: order:4, mode:0x1040d0
  CPU: 1 PID: 192063 Comm: sadc Not tainted 3.10.0-123.el7.s390x #1
  [...]
  Call Trace:
    show_stack+0x6c/0xe8
    warn_alloc_failed+0xd6/0x138
    __alloc_pages_nodemask+0x9da/0xb68
    __get_free_pages+0x2e/0x58
    kmalloc_order_trace+0x44/0xc0
    stat_open+0x5a/0xd8
    proc_reg_open+0x8a/0x140
    d
    
commit 058504edd02667eef8fac9be27ab3ea74332e9b4
+21 -9
expand_less