Data corruption may occur under heavy load when Transparent Huge Pages and NUMA balancing are both enabled

This document (7021573) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 1 (SLES 12 SP1)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack 2 (SLES 12 SP2)

Situation

Data corruption may occur under memory intensive loads when Transparent Huge Pages and automatic page fault based NUMA memory balancing are both enabled (which are the defaults) on SLES 12 SP1 and SP2.

Resolution

This issue is resolved through a kernel patch.  The kernel update which includes the patch is available as follows:

For SLES 12 SP1:
Update the kernel to version 3.12.74-60.64.40.1 released on 19 May 2017 , or newer.

For SLES 12 SP2:
Update the kernel to version 4.4.74-92.29.1 released on 13 July 2017, or newer.

Cause

The data corruption was caused by a race condition in the kernel. As a result of this race condition, it's possible for the kernel to reference memory that was, but is no longer, associated with a PTE mapped to huge pages.

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

  • Document ID:7021573
  • Creation Date: 21-Sep-2017
  • Modified Date:03-Mar-2020
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

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