Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

memcg: move LRU size accounting on reparenting instead of copying it

When a memory cgroup is offlined its LRU folios are reparented to the parent. lruvec_reparent_lru() splices the child's lists into the parent's and credits the parent with the child's per-zone lru_zone_size[], but never clears the child's copy, so the size is copied rather than moved. lru_gen_reparent_memcg() does the same for MGLRU.

The parent is left correct, credited with exactly the folios it took over. The stale value sits on the child and nothing will correct it: folio->memcg_data now resolves to the parent, so every later update_lru_size() for those folios goes there.

Dying cgroups are not freed immediately and mem_cgroup_iter() still walks them, so shrink_lruvec() keeps being called on them. get_scan_count() reads the phantom counter through lruvec_lru_size() and the scan loop then grinds through nr[] in SWAP_CLUSTER_MAX steps against an empty list, for as long as the dead cgroup lives. Under MGLRU the MGLRU scanner runs instead, but count_shadow_nodes() sums all of NR_LRU_LISTS through lruvec_lru_size() and over-budgets the shadow node limit just the same.

On one 251 GiB host a sweep of every mz->lru_zone_size[] found 380 counters describing folios on no list at all: 124777314 pages, 476 GiB, 1.89x the machine's RAM, across 57 cgroups. All were on memcgs with CSS_DYING set and CSS_ONLINE clear, and parent/child pairs repo…