<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>user/sven/linux.git/Documentation, branch v4.19.41</title>
<subtitle>Linux Kernel
</subtitle>
<id>https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/atom?h=v4.19.41</id>
<link rel='self' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/atom?h=v4.19.41'/>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/'/>
<updated>2019-05-08T05:21:44Z</updated>
<entry>
<title>USB: core: Fix bug caused by duplicate interface PM usage counter</title>
<updated>2019-05-08T05:21:44Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Alan Stern</name>
<email>stern@rowland.harvard.edu</email>
</author>
<published>2019-04-19T17:52:38Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=83c6688d679c1d95ed79650f4ec6e702548c39ef'/>
<id>urn:sha1:83c6688d679c1d95ed79650f4ec6e702548c39ef</id>
<content type='text'>
commit c2b71462d294cf517a0bc6e4fd6424d7cee5596f upstream.

The syzkaller fuzzer reported a bug in the USB hub driver which turned
out to be caused by a negative runtime-PM usage counter.  This allowed
a hub to be runtime suspended at a time when the driver did not expect
it.  The symptom is a WARNING issued because the hub's status URB is
submitted while it is already active:

	URB 0000000031fb463e submitted while active
	WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 2917 at drivers/usb/core/urb.c:363

The negative runtime-PM usage count was caused by an unfortunate
design decision made when runtime PM was first implemented for USB.
At that time, USB class drivers were allowed to unbind from their
interfaces without balancing the usage counter (i.e., leaving it with
a positive count).  The core code would take care of setting the
counter back to 0 before allowing another driver to bind to the
interface.

Later on when runtime PM was implemented for the entire kernel, the
opposite decision was made: Drivers were required to balance their
runtime-PM get and put calls.  In order to maintain backward
compatibility, however, the USB subsystem adapted to the new
implementation by keeping an independent usage counter for each
interface and using it to automatically adjust the normal usage
counter back to 0 whenever a driver was unbound.

This approach involves duplicating information, but what is worse, it
doesn't work properly in cases where a USB class driver delays
decrementing the usage counter until after the driver's disconnect()
routine has returned and the counter has been adjusted back to 0.
Doing so would cause the usage counter to become negative.  There's
even a warning about this in the USB power management documentation!

As it happens, this is exactly what the hub driver does.  The
kick_hub_wq() routine increments the runtime-PM usage counter, and the
corresponding decrement is carried out by hub_event() in the context
of the hub_wq work-queue thread.  This work routine may sometimes run
after the driver has been unbound from its interface, and when it does
it causes the usage counter to go negative.

It is not possible for hub_disconnect() to wait for a pending
hub_event() call to finish, because hub_disconnect() is called with
the device lock held and hub_event() acquires that lock.  The only
feasible fix is to reverse the original design decision: remove the
duplicate interface-specific usage counter and require USB drivers to
balance their runtime PM gets and puts.  As far as I know, all
existing drivers currently do this.

Signed-off-by: Alan Stern &lt;stern@rowland.harvard.edu&gt;
Reported-and-tested-by: syzbot+7634edaea4d0b341c625@syzkaller.appspotmail.com
CC: &lt;stable@vger.kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>i2c: i801: Add support for Intel Comet Lake</title>
<updated>2019-05-04T07:20:15Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Jarkko Nikula</name>
<email>jarkko.nikula@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-03-15T10:56:49Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=cdef35e83c3fafab06a7fa4fe7a179e08f1a85c2'/>
<id>urn:sha1:cdef35e83c3fafab06a7fa4fe7a179e08f1a85c2</id>
<content type='text'>
[ Upstream commit 5cd1c56c42beb6d228cc8d4373fdc5f5ec78a5ad ]

Add PCI ID for Intel Comet Lake PCH.

Signed-off-by: Jarkko Nikula &lt;jarkko.nikula@linux.intel.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Jean Delvare &lt;jdelvare@suse.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Wolfram Sang &lt;wsa@the-dreams.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin (Microsoft) &lt;sashal@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>powerpc/fsl: Add FSL_PPC_BOOK3E as supported arch for nospectre_v2 boot arg</title>
<updated>2019-05-02T07:59:01Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Diana Craciun</name>
<email>diana.craciun@nxp.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-12-12T14:03:10Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=5cb299c806516b7f22dd9c5fe4f50ca85320b07b'/>
<id>urn:sha1:5cb299c806516b7f22dd9c5fe4f50ca85320b07b</id>
<content type='text'>
commit e59f5bd759b7dee57593c5b6c0441609bda5d530 upstream.

Signed-off-by: Diana Craciun &lt;diana.craciun@nxp.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Michael Ellerman &lt;mpe@ellerman.id.au&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>ipv4: set the tcp_min_rtt_wlen range from 0 to one day</title>
<updated>2019-05-02T07:58:59Z</updated>
<author>
<name>ZhangXiaoxu</name>
<email>zhangxiaoxu5@huawei.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-04-16T01:47:24Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=250e51f856e1534e3e769add508f121966030462'/>
<id>urn:sha1:250e51f856e1534e3e769add508f121966030462</id>
<content type='text'>
[ Upstream commit 19fad20d15a6494f47f85d869f00b11343ee5c78 ]

There is a UBSAN report as below:
UBSAN: Undefined behaviour in net/ipv4/tcp_input.c:2877:56
signed integer overflow:
2147483647 * 1000 cannot be represented in type 'int'
CPU: 3 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/3 Not tainted 5.1.0-rc4-00058-g582549e #1
Call Trace:
 &lt;IRQ&gt;
 dump_stack+0x8c/0xba
 ubsan_epilogue+0x11/0x60
 handle_overflow+0x12d/0x170
 ? ttwu_do_wakeup+0x21/0x320
 __ubsan_handle_mul_overflow+0x12/0x20
 tcp_ack_update_rtt+0x76c/0x780
 tcp_clean_rtx_queue+0x499/0x14d0
 tcp_ack+0x69e/0x1240
 ? __wake_up_sync_key+0x2c/0x50
 ? update_group_capacity+0x50/0x680
 tcp_rcv_established+0x4e2/0xe10
 tcp_v4_do_rcv+0x22b/0x420
 tcp_v4_rcv+0xfe8/0x1190
 ip_protocol_deliver_rcu+0x36/0x180
 ip_local_deliver+0x15b/0x1a0
 ip_rcv+0xac/0xd0
 __netif_receive_skb_one_core+0x7f/0xb0
 __netif_receive_skb+0x33/0xc0
 netif_receive_skb_internal+0x84/0x1c0
 napi_gro_receive+0x2a0/0x300
 receive_buf+0x3d4/0x2350
 ? detach_buf_split+0x159/0x390
 virtnet_poll+0x198/0x840
 ? reweight_entity+0x243/0x4b0
 net_rx_action+0x25c/0x770
 __do_softirq+0x19b/0x66d
 irq_exit+0x1eb/0x230
 do_IRQ+0x7a/0x150
 common_interrupt+0xf/0xf
 &lt;/IRQ&gt;

It can be reproduced by:
  echo 2147483647 &gt; /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_min_rtt_wlen

Fixes: f672258391b42 ("tcp: track min RTT using windowed min-filter")
Signed-off-by: ZhangXiaoxu &lt;zhangxiaoxu5@huawei.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller &lt;davem@davemloft.net&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>ARM: 8833/1: Ensure that NEON code always compiles with Clang</title>
<updated>2019-04-05T20:33:08Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Nathan Chancellor</name>
<email>natechancellor@gmail.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-02-02T02:34:36Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=d93fe5e6c9d92e3fc4f245422050c91d7f385836'/>
<id>urn:sha1:d93fe5e6c9d92e3fc4f245422050c91d7f385836</id>
<content type='text'>
[ Upstream commit de9c0d49d85dc563549972edc5589d195cd5e859 ]

While building arm32 allyesconfig, I ran into the following errors:

  arch/arm/lib/xor-neon.c:17:2: error: You should compile this file with
  '-mfloat-abi=softfp -mfpu=neon'

  In file included from lib/raid6/neon1.c:27:
  /home/nathan/cbl/prebuilt/lib/clang/8.0.0/include/arm_neon.h:28:2:
  error: "NEON support not enabled"

Building V=1 showed NEON_FLAGS getting passed along to Clang but
__ARM_NEON__ was not getting defined. Ultimately, it boils down to Clang
only defining __ARM_NEON__ when targeting armv7, rather than armv6k,
which is the '-march' value for allyesconfig.

&gt;From lib/Basic/Targets/ARM.cpp in the Clang source:

  // This only gets set when Neon instructions are actually available, unlike
  // the VFP define, hence the soft float and arch check. This is subtly
  // different from gcc, we follow the intent which was that it should be set
  // when Neon instructions are actually available.
  if ((FPU &amp; NeonFPU) &amp;&amp; !SoftFloat &amp;&amp; ArchVersion &gt;= 7) {
    Builder.defineMacro("__ARM_NEON", "1");
    Builder.defineMacro("__ARM_NEON__");
    // current AArch32 NEON implementations do not support double-precision
    // floating-point even when it is present in VFP.
    Builder.defineMacro("__ARM_NEON_FP",
                        "0x" + Twine::utohexstr(HW_FP &amp; ~HW_FP_DP));
  }

Ard Biesheuvel recommended explicitly adding '-march=armv7-a' at the
beginning of the NEON_FLAGS definitions so that __ARM_NEON__ always gets
definined by Clang. This doesn't functionally change anything because
that code will only run where NEON is supported, which is implicitly
armv7.

Link: https://github.com/ClangBuiltLinux/linux/issues/287

Suggested-by: Ard Biesheuvel &lt;ard.biesheuvel@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Nathan Chancellor &lt;natechancellor@gmail.com&gt;
Acked-by: Nicolas Pitre &lt;nico@linaro.org&gt;
Reviewed-by: Nick Desaulniers &lt;ndesaulniers@google.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Stefan Agner &lt;stefan@agner.ch&gt;
Signed-off-by: Russell King &lt;rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk&gt;
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin &lt;sashal@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>KVM: Reject device ioctls from processes other than the VM's creator</title>
<updated>2019-04-03T04:26:29Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Sean Christopherson</name>
<email>sean.j.christopherson@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2019-02-15T20:48:39Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=7ceedcefc2d2506536f634f1887521be51d598c2'/>
<id>urn:sha1:7ceedcefc2d2506536f634f1887521be51d598c2</id>
<content type='text'>
commit ddba91801aeb5c160b660caed1800eb3aef403f8 upstream.

KVM's API requires thats ioctls must be issued from the same process
that created the VM.  In other words, userspace can play games with a
VM's file descriptors, e.g. fork(), SCM_RIGHTS, etc..., but only the
creator can do anything useful.  Explicitly reject device ioctls that
are issued by a process other than the VM's creator, and update KVM's
API documentation to extend its requirements to device ioctls.

Fixes: 852b6d57dc7f ("kvm: add device control API")
Cc: &lt;stable@vger.kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson &lt;sean.j.christopherson@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini &lt;pbonzini@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>stable-kernel-rules.rst: add link to networking patch queue</title>
<updated>2019-03-23T19:10:10Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Greg Kroah-Hartman</name>
<email>gregkh@linuxfoundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2019-01-22T18:46:32Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=2ca85aac1213ffe90d8503521fb57bed4c2cabd4'/>
<id>urn:sha1:2ca85aac1213ffe90d8503521fb57bed4c2cabd4</id>
<content type='text'>
commit a41e8f25fa8f8f67360d88eb0eebbabe95a64bdf upstream.

The networking maintainer keeps a public list of the patches being
queued up for the next round of stable releases.  Be sure to check there
before asking for a patch to be applied so that you do not waste
people's time.

Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;
Acked-by: David S. Miller &lt;davem@davemloft.net&gt;
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet &lt;corbet@lwn.net&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>clocksource/drivers/arch_timer: Workaround for Allwinner A64 timer instability</title>
<updated>2019-03-23T19:09:58Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Samuel Holland</name>
<email>samuel@sholland.org</email>
</author>
<published>2019-01-13T02:17:18Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=e19ca3fe6cf230a0e5df70da7acade133f2b670c'/>
<id>urn:sha1:e19ca3fe6cf230a0e5df70da7acade133f2b670c</id>
<content type='text'>
commit c950ca8c35eeb32224a63adc47e12f9e226da241 upstream.

The Allwinner A64 SoC is known[1] to have an unstable architectural
timer, which manifests itself most obviously in the time jumping forward
a multiple of 95 years[2][3]. This coincides with 2^56 cycles at a
timer frequency of 24 MHz, implying that the time went slightly backward
(and this was interpreted by the kernel as it jumping forward and
wrapping around past the epoch).

Investigation revealed instability in the low bits of CNTVCT at the
point a high bit rolls over. This leads to power-of-two cycle forward
and backward jumps. (Testing shows that forward jumps are about twice as
likely as backward jumps.) Since the counter value returns to normal
after an indeterminate read, each "jump" really consists of both a
forward and backward jump from the software perspective.

Unless the kernel is trapping CNTVCT reads, a userspace program is able
to read the register in a loop faster than it changes. A test program
running on all 4 CPU cores that reported jumps larger than 100 ms was
run for 13.6 hours and reported the following:

 Count | Event
-------+---------------------------
  9940 | jumped backward      699ms
   268 | jumped backward     1398ms
     1 | jumped backward     2097ms
 16020 | jumped forward       175ms
  6443 | jumped forward       699ms
  2976 | jumped forward      1398ms
     9 | jumped forward    356516ms
     9 | jumped forward    357215ms
     4 | jumped forward    714430ms
     1 | jumped forward   3578440ms

This works out to a jump larger than 100 ms about every 5.5 seconds on
each CPU core.

The largest jump (almost an hour!) was the following sequence of reads:
    0x0000007fffffffff → 0x00000093feffffff → 0x0000008000000000

Note that the middle bits don't necessarily all read as all zeroes or
all ones during the anomalous behavior; however the low 10 bits checked
by the function in this patch have never been observed with any other
value.

Also note that smaller jumps are much more common, with backward jumps
of 2048 (2^11) cycles observed over 400 times per second on each core.
(Of course, this is partially explained by lower bits rolling over more
frequently.) Any one of these could have caused the 95 year time skip.

Similar anomalies were observed while reading CNTPCT (after patching the
kernel to allow reads from userspace). However, the CNTPCT jumps are
much less frequent, and only small jumps were observed. The same program
as before (except now reading CNTPCT) observed after 72 hours:

 Count | Event
-------+---------------------------
    17 | jumped backward      699ms
    52 | jumped forward       175ms
  2831 | jumped forward       699ms
     5 | jumped forward      1398ms

Further investigation showed that the instability in CNTPCT/CNTVCT also
affected the respective timer's TVAL register. The following values were
observed immediately after writing CNVT_TVAL to 0x10000000:

 CNTVCT             | CNTV_TVAL  | CNTV_CVAL          | CNTV_TVAL Error
--------------------+------------+--------------------+-----------------
 0x000000d4a2d8bfff | 0x10003fff | 0x000000d4b2d8bfff | +0x00004000
 0x000000d4a2d94000 | 0x0fffffff | 0x000000d4b2d97fff | -0x00004000
 0x000000d4a2d97fff | 0x10003fff | 0x000000d4b2d97fff | +0x00004000
 0x000000d4a2d9c000 | 0x0fffffff | 0x000000d4b2d9ffff | -0x00004000

The pattern of errors in CNTV_TVAL seemed to depend on exactly which
value was written to it. For example, after writing 0x10101010:

 CNTVCT             | CNTV_TVAL  | CNTV_CVAL          | CNTV_TVAL Error
--------------------+------------+--------------------+-----------------
 0x000001ac3effffff | 0x1110100f | 0x000001ac4f10100f | +0x1000000
 0x000001ac40000000 | 0x1010100f | 0x000001ac5110100f | -0x1000000
 0x000001ac58ffffff | 0x1110100f | 0x000001ac6910100f | +0x1000000
 0x000001ac66000000 | 0x1010100f | 0x000001ac7710100f | -0x1000000
 0x000001ac6affffff | 0x1110100f | 0x000001ac7b10100f | +0x1000000
 0x000001ac6e000000 | 0x1010100f | 0x000001ac7f10100f | -0x1000000

I was also twice able to reproduce the issue covered by Allwinner's
workaround[4], that writing to TVAL sometimes fails, and both CVAL and
TVAL are left with entirely bogus values. One was the following values:

 CNTVCT             | CNTV_TVAL  | CNTV_CVAL
--------------------+------------+--------------------------------------
 0x000000d4a2d6014c | 0x8fbd5721 | 0x000000d132935fff (615s in the past)
Reviewed-by: Marc Zyngier &lt;marc.zyngier@arm.com&gt;

========================================================================

Because the CPU can read the CNTPCT/CNTVCT registers faster than they
change, performing two reads of the register and comparing the high bits
(like other workarounds) is not a workable solution. And because the
timer can jump both forward and backward, no pair of reads can
distinguish a good value from a bad one. The only way to guarantee a
good value from consecutive reads would be to read _three_ times, and
take the middle value only if the three values are 1) each unique and
2) increasing. This takes at minimum 3 counter cycles (125 ns), or more
if an anomaly is detected.

However, since there is a distinct pattern to the bad values, we can
optimize the common case (1022/1024 of the time) to a single read by
simply ignoring values that match the error pattern. This still takes no
more than 3 cycles in the worst case, and requires much less code. As an
additional safety check, we still limit the loop iteration to the number
of max-frequency (1.2 GHz) CPU cycles in three 24 MHz counter periods.

For the TVAL registers, the simple solution is to not use them. Instead,
read or write the CVAL and calculate the TVAL value in software.

Although the manufacturer is aware of at least part of the erratum[4],
there is no official name for it. For now, use the kernel-internal name
"UNKNOWN1".

[1]: https://github.com/armbian/build/commit/a08cd6fe7ae9
[2]: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/3458-a64-datetime-clock-issue/
[3]: https://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2018-01-26
[4]: https://github.com/Allwinner-Homlet/H6-BSP4.9-linux/blob/master/drivers/clocksource/arm_arch_timer.c#L272

Acked-by: Maxime Ripard &lt;maxime.ripard@bootlin.com&gt;
Tested-by: Andre Przywara &lt;andre.przywara@arm.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Samuel Holland &lt;samuel@sholland.org&gt;
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Daniel Lezcano &lt;daniel.lezcano@linaro.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;

</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>dt-bindings: eeprom: at24: add "atmel,24c2048" compatible string</title>
<updated>2019-02-20T09:25:35Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Adrian Bunk</name>
<email>bunk@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2018-11-29T19:58:57Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=57e85c67d0330239658ecd5f89f060c6381ea95d'/>
<id>urn:sha1:57e85c67d0330239658ecd5f89f060c6381ea95d</id>
<content type='text'>
[ Upstream commit 6c0c5dc33ff42af49243e94842d0ebdb153189ea ]

Add new compatible to the device tree bindings.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk &lt;bunk@kernel.org&gt;
Acked-by: Rob Herring &lt;robh@kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Bartosz Golaszewski &lt;brgl@bgdev.pl&gt;
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin &lt;sashal@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm, proc: be more verbose about unstable VMA flags in /proc/&lt;pid&gt;/smaps</title>
<updated>2019-01-26T08:32:44Z</updated>
<author>
<name>Michal Hocko</name>
<email>mhocko@suse.com</email>
</author>
<published>2018-12-28T08:38:17Z</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.stealer.net/cgit.cgi/user/sven/linux.git/commit/?id=0d73e773edc9b2af190c8a067cd24f282b30e6a8'/>
<id>urn:sha1:0d73e773edc9b2af190c8a067cd24f282b30e6a8</id>
<content type='text'>
[ Upstream commit 7550c6079846a24f30d15ac75a941c8515dbedfb ]

Patch series "THP eligibility reporting via proc".

This series of three patches aims at making THP eligibility reporting much
more robust and long term sustainable.  The trigger for the change is a
regression report [2] and the long follow up discussion.  In short the
specific application didn't have good API to query whether a particular
mapping can be backed by THP so it has used VMA flags to workaround that.
These flags represent a deep internal state of VMAs and as such they
should be used by userspace with a great deal of caution.

A similar has happened for [3] when users complained that VM_MIXEDMAP is
no longer set on DAX mappings.  Again a lack of a proper API led to an
abuse.

The first patch in the series tries to emphasise that that the semantic of
flags might change and any application consuming those should be really
careful.

The remaining two patches provide a more suitable interface to address [2]
and provide a consistent API to query the THP status both for each VMA and
process wide as well.  [1]

http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181120103515.25280-1-mhocko@kernel.org [2]
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.21.1809241054050.224429@chino.kir.corp.google.com
[3] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181002100531.GC4135@quack2.suse.cz

This patch (of 3):

Even though vma flags exported via /proc/&lt;pid&gt;/smaps are explicitly
documented to be not guaranteed for future compatibility the warning
doesn't go far enough because it doesn't mention semantic changes to those
flags.  And they are important as well because these flags are a deep
implementation internal to the MM code and the semantic might change at
any time.

Let's consider two recent examples:
http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181002100531.GC4135@quack2.suse.cz
: commit e1fb4a086495 "dax: remove VM_MIXEDMAP for fsdax and device dax" has
: removed VM_MIXEDMAP flag from DAX VMAs. Now our testing shows that in the
: mean time certain customer of ours started poking into /proc/&lt;pid&gt;/smaps
: and looks at VMA flags there and if VM_MIXEDMAP is missing among the VMA
: flags, the application just fails to start complaining that DAX support is
: missing in the kernel.

http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.21.1809241054050.224429@chino.kir.corp.google.com
: Commit 1860033237d4 ("mm: make PR_SET_THP_DISABLE immediately active")
: introduced a regression in that userspace cannot always determine the set
: of vmas where thp is ineligible.
: Userspace relies on the "nh" flag being emitted as part of /proc/pid/smaps
: to determine if a vma is eligible to be backed by hugepages.
: Previous to this commit, prctl(PR_SET_THP_DISABLE, 1) would cause thp to
: be disabled and emit "nh" as a flag for the corresponding vmas as part of
: /proc/pid/smaps.  After the commit, thp is disabled by means of an mm
: flag and "nh" is not emitted.
: This causes smaps parsing libraries to assume a vma is eligible for thp
: and ends up puzzling the user on why its memory is not backed by thp.

In both cases userspace was relying on a semantic of a specific VMA flag.
The primary reason why that happened is a lack of a proper interface.
While this has been worked on and it will be fixed properly, it seems that
our wording could see some refinement and be more vocal about semantic
aspect of these flags as well.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20181211143641.3503-2-mhocko@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko &lt;mhocko@suse.com&gt;
Acked-by: Jan Kara &lt;jack@suse.cz&gt;
Acked-by: Dan Williams &lt;dan.j.williams@intel.com&gt;
Acked-by: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Acked-by: Mike Rapoport &lt;rppt@linux.ibm.com&gt;
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka &lt;vbabka@suse.cz&gt;
Cc: Dan Williams &lt;dan.j.williams@intel.com&gt;
Cc: David Rientjes &lt;rientjes@google.com&gt;
Cc: Paul Oppenheimer &lt;bepvte@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: William Kucharski &lt;william.kucharski@oracle.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin &lt;sashal@kernel.org&gt;
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