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Lorenzo Stoakes 64212ba02e mm: implement sticky VMA flags
It is useful to be able to designate that certain flags are 'sticky', that
is, if two VMAs are merged one with a flag of this nature and one without,
the merged VMA sets this flag.

As a result we ignore these flags for the purposes of determining VMA flag
differences between VMAs being considered for merge.

This patch therefore updates the VMA merge logic to perform this action,
with flags possessing this property being described in the VM_STICKY
bitmap.

Those flags which ought to be ignored for the purposes of VMA merge are
described in the VM_IGNORE_MERGE bitmap, which the VMA merge logic is also
updated to use.

As part of this change we place VM_SOFTDIRTY in VM_IGNORE_MERGE as it
already had this behaviour, alongside VM_STICKY as sticky flags by
implication must not disallow merge.

Ultimately it seems that we should make VM_SOFTDIRTY a sticky flag in its
own right, but this change is out of scope for this series.

The only sticky flag designated as such is VM_MAYBE_GUARD, so as a result
of this change, once the VMA flag is set upon guard region installation,
VMAs with guard ranges will now not have their merge behaviour impacted as
a result and can be freely merged with other VMAs without VM_MAYBE_GUARD
set.

Also update the comments for vma_modify_flags() to directly reference
sticky flags now we have established the concept.

We also update the VMA userland tests to account for the changes.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/22ad5269f7669d62afb42ce0c79bad70b994c58d.1763460113.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Andrei Vagin <avagin@gmail.com>
Cc: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Barry Song <baohua@kernel.org>
Cc: David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) <david@kernel.org>
Cc: Dev Jain <dev.jain@arm.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: "Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
Documentation mm: introduce VM_MAYBE_GUARD and make visible in /proc/$pid/smaps 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Replace the obsolete address of the FSF in the GFDL-1.2 2025-07-24 11:15:39 +02:00
arch mm: make INVALID_PHYS_ADDR a generic macro 2025-11-16 17:28:26 -08:00
block block-6.18-20251031 2025-10-31 12:57:19 -07:00
certs sign-file,extract-cert: use pkcs11 provider for OPENSSL MAJOR >= 3 2024-09-20 19:52:48 +03:00
crypto This push contains the following changes: 2025-10-10 08:56:16 -07:00
drivers vfio/nvgrace-gpu: register device memory for poison handling 2025-11-16 17:28:30 -08:00
fs mm: introduce VM_MAYBE_GUARD and make visible in /proc/$pid/smaps 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
include mm: implement sticky VMA flags 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
init printk changes for 6.18 2025-10-04 11:13:11 -07:00
io_uring mm: consistently use current->mm in mm_get_unmapped_area() 2025-11-16 17:27:57 -08:00
ipc namespace-6.18-rc1 2025-09-29 11:20:29 -07:00
kernel mm: make INVALID_PHYS_ADDR a generic macro 2025-11-16 17:28:26 -08:00
lib lib/alloc_tag: use %pe format specifier 2025-11-20 13:43:57 -08:00
mm mm: implement sticky VMA flags 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
net Including fixes from bluetooth and wireless. 2025-11-06 08:52:30 -08:00
rust rust: kbuild: workaround `rustdoc` doctests modifier bug 2025-11-04 00:00:06 +01:00
samples Char/Misc/IIO/Binder changes for 6.18-rc1 2025-10-04 16:26:32 -07:00
scripts scripts/decode_stacktrace.sh: fix build ID and PC source parsing 2025-11-09 21:19:45 -08:00
security integrity-v6.18 2025-10-05 10:48:33 -07:00
sound ASoC: Fixes for v6.18 2025-10-30 13:08:08 +01:00
tools mm: implement sticky VMA flags 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
usr gen_init_cpio: Ignore fsync() returning EINVAL on pipes 2025-10-07 09:53:05 -07:00
virt KVM x86 fixes for 6.18: 2025-10-18 10:25:43 +02:00
.clang-format memblock: drop for_each_free_mem_pfn_range_in_zone_from() 2025-09-14 08:49:03 +03:00
.clippy.toml rust: clean Rust 1.88.0's warning about `clippy::disallowed_macros` configuration 2025-05-07 00:11:47 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.editorconfig .editorconfig: remove trim_trailing_whitespace option 2024-06-13 16:47:52 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore MAINTAINERS: remove Alyssa Rosenzweig 2025-09-18 21:17:31 +02:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore compile_commands.json globally 2025-08-12 15:53:55 -07:00
.mailmap MAINTAINERS: update David Hildenbrand's email address 2025-11-15 10:52:01 -08:00
.pylintrc tools: docs: parse-headers.py: move it from sphinx dir 2025-08-29 15:54:42 -06:00
.rustfmt.toml
COPYING
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: mark ISDN subsystem as orphan 2025-10-27 17:49:45 -07:00
Kbuild sched: Make migrate_{en,dis}able() inline 2025-09-25 09:57:16 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS mm/hugetlb: extract sysctl into hugetlb_sysctl.c 2025-11-20 13:43:57 -08:00
Makefile Linux 6.18-rc5 2025-11-09 15:10:19 -08:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.