Commit d49004c5f0c1 ("arch, mm: consolidate initialization of nodes, zones and memory map") moved free_area_init() from setup_arch() to mm_core_init_early(), which runs after setup_arch() returns. This changed the ordering relative to init_cpu_to_node() on x86. Before the commit, free_area_init() ran during paging_init() (called from setup_arch()) *before* init_cpu_to_node(). After the commit, it runs *after* init_cpu_to_node(). On machines with memoryless NUMA nodes (e.g., node 0 has CPUs but no memory), this causes a NULL pointer dereference: 1. numa_register_nodes() skips memoryless nodes: no alloc_node_data() and no node_set_online() for them. 2. init_cpu_to_node() sets memoryless nodes online (they have CPUs) but does not allocate NODE_DATA. 3. free_area_init() checks "if (!node_online(nid))" to decide whether to call alloc_offline_node_data(). Since the memoryless node is now online, the allocation is skipped, leaving NODE_DATA(nid) == NULL. 4. The immediate "pgdat = NODE_DATA(nid)" dereferences NULL. The crash happens before console_init(), so no output is visible without earlyprintk. With earlyprintk enabled, the following panic is observed: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: 000000000002a1e0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI RIP: 0010:free_area_init_node+0x3a/0x540 Call Trace: free_area_init+0x331/0x4e0 start_kernel+0x69/0x4a0 x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x30 x86_64_start_kernel+0x125/0x130 common_startup_64+0x13e/0x148 Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task! Fix this by checking "if (!NODE_DATA(nid))" instead of "if (!node_online(nid))". This directly tests whether the per-node data structure needs to be allocated, regardless of the node's online status. This change is also safe for non-x86 architectures as they all allocate NODE_DATA for every node including memoryless ones, so the check simply evaluates to false with no change in behavior. Fixes: d49004c5f0c1 ("arch, mm: consolidate initialization of nodes, zones and memory map") Signed-off-by: Ming Lei --- V2: - add commit log for non-x86 arch - add comment for code change mm/mm_init.c | 6 +++++- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/mm/mm_init.c b/mm/mm_init.c index 61d983d23f55..df34797691bd 100644 --- a/mm/mm_init.c +++ b/mm/mm_init.c @@ -1896,7 +1896,11 @@ static void __init free_area_init(void) for_each_node(nid) { pg_data_t *pgdat; - if (!node_online(nid)) + /* + * If an architecture has not allocated node data for + * this node, presume the node is memoryless or offline. + */ + if (!NODE_DATA(nid)) alloc_offline_node_data(nid); pgdat = NODE_DATA(nid); -- 2.53.0