[PATCH v3 0/3] scsi: target: rd: Fix oversized ramdisk allocations

From: Sanan Hasanov

Date: Thu Oct 08 2026 - 19:54:27 EST


From: Sanan Hasanov <sanan.hasanov@xxxxxxx>

A ramdisk page count set through configfs (rd_pages=) has no upper bound.
syzbot found that a large value makes rd_build_device_space() attempt a
single sg table array allocation above the page allocator's maximum
order, which triggers a WARNING. Patch 1 rejects page counts that
exceed system RAM and allocates the array with kvzalloc so that valid
large ramdisks also work.

A page count close to system RAM still passes that check, and the
backing pages are allocated with GFP_KERNEL, which invokes the OOM
killer instead of failing. On a 1 GiB VM, rd_pages=250000 panics the
system with "System is deadlocked on memory". Patch 3 allocates the
backing pages with __GFP_RETRY_MAYFAIL so that enabling such a device
fails with -ENOMEM instead.

That makes the failure path in rd_build_prot_space() reachable, and it
leaks the partially allocated protection space when pi_prot_type is
written again. Patch 2 fixes that first, so that patch 3 does not
introduce a leak.

Tested on an arm64 QEMU VM with 1 GiB RAM, with the syzbot reproducer,
normal and NULLIO ramdisks, DIF protection space, device removal, and
rd_pages=250000. The leak was checked with kmemleak by making
pi_prot_type=1 fail under memory pressure and then writing it again:
two unreferenced objects from rd_init_prot() are reported without
patch 2, none with it.

Changes in v3:
- New patch 2 to release the protection space when its allocation
fails (Sashiko AI review).

Changes in v2:
- Allocate the sg table arrays with kvzalloc_objs() so that ramdisks
larger than 512 GiB do not hit the same WARNING (Sashiko AI review).
- New patch to avoid the OOM killer when the backing pages cannot be
allocated (Sashiko AI review).

v2: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261008223712.49827-1-sanan.hasanou@xxxxxxxxx/
v1: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261008215709.46014-1-sanan.hasanou@xxxxxxxxx/


Sanan Hasanov (3):
scsi: target: rd: Fix oversized sg table array allocation
scsi: target: rd: Release protection space on allocation failure
scsi: target: rd: Don't invoke the OOM killer for ramdisk pages

drivers/target/target_core_rd.c | 20 +++++++++++++++-----
1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)


base-commit: 6c377d19d4a5116d9bec5203aa3c6c11523e7898
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2.48.1