kernel/linux.git/include/linux/ksm.h, branch v6.19.11

mm/ksm: fix exec/fork inheritance support for prctl

2025-11-17T01:27:55+00:00

Patch series "ksm: fix exec/fork inheritance", v2. This series fixes exec/fork inheritance. See the detailed description of the issue below. This patch (of 2): Background ========== commit d7597f59d1d33 ("mm: add new api to enable ksm per process") introduced MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY for mm->flags, and allowed user to set it by prctl() so that the process's VMAs are forcibly scanned by ksmd. Subsequently, the 3c6f33b7273a ("mm/ksm: support fork/exec for prctl") supported inheriting the MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY flag when a task calls execve(). Finally, commit 3a9e567ca45fb ("mm/ksm: fix ksm exec support for prctl") fixed the issue that ksmd doesn't scan the mm_struct with MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY by adding the mm_slot to ksm_mm_head in __bprm_mm_init(). Problem ======= In some extreme scenarios, however, this inheritance of MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY during exec/fork can fail. For example, when the scanning frequency of ksmd is tuned extremely high, a process carrying MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY may still fail to pass it to the newly exec'd process. This happens because ksm_execve() is executed too early in the do_execve flow (prematurely adding the new mm_struct to the ksm_mm_slot list). As a result, before do_execve completes, ksmd may have already performed a scan and found that this new mm_struct has no VM_MERGEABLE VMAs, thus clearing its MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY flag. Consequently, when the new program executes, the flag MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY inheritance missed. Root reason =========== commit d7597f59d1d33 ("mm: add new api to enable ksm per process") clear the flag MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY when ksmd found no VM_MERGEABLE VMAs. Solution ======== Firstly, Don't clear MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY when ksmd found no VM_MERGEABLE VMAs, because perhaps their mm_struct has just been added to ksm_mm_slot list, and its process has not yet officially started running or has not yet performed mmap/brk to allocate anonymous VMAS. Secondly, recheck MMF_VM_MERGEABLE again if a process takes MMF_VM_MERGE_ANY, and create a mm_slot and join it into ksm_scan_list again. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251007182504440BJgK8VXRHh8TD7IGSUIY4@zte.com.cn Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251007182821572h_SoFqYZXEP1mvWI4n9VL@zte.com.cn Fixes: 3c6f33b7273a ("mm/ksm: support fork/exec for prctl") Fixes: d7597f59d1d3 ("mm: add new api to enable ksm per process") Signed-off-by: xu xin Cc: Stefan Roesch Cc: David Hildenbrand Cc: Jinjiang Tu Cc: Wang Yaxin Cc: Yang Yang Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/ksm: fix incorrect KSM counter handling in mm_struct during fork

2025-09-28T18:51:32+00:00

Patch series "mm/ksm: Fix incorrect accounting of KSM counters during fork", v3. The first patch in this series fixes the incorrect accounting of KSM counters such as ksm_merging_pages, ksm_rmap_items, and the global ksm_zero_pages during fork. The following patch add a selftest to verify the ksm_merging_pages counter was updated correctly during fork. Test Results ============ Without the first patch ----------------------- # [RUN] test_fork_ksm_merging_page_count not ok 10 ksm_merging_page in child: 32 With the first patch -------------------- # [RUN] test_fork_ksm_merging_page_count ok 10 ksm_merging_pages is not inherited after fork This patch (of 2): Currently, the KSM-related counters in `mm_struct`, such as `ksm_merging_pages`, `ksm_rmap_items`, and `ksm_zero_pages`, are inherited by the child process during fork. This results in inconsistent accounting. When a process uses KSM, identical pages are merged and an rmap item is created for each merged page. The `ksm_merging_pages` and `ksm_rmap_items` counters are updated accordingly. However, after a fork, these counters are copied to the child while the corresponding rmap items are not. As a result, when the child later triggers an unmerge, there are no rmap items present in the child, so the counters remain stale, leading to incorrect accounting. A similar issue exists with `ksm_zero_pages`, which maintains both a global counter and a per-process counter. During fork, the per-process counter is inherited by the child, but the global counter is not incremented. Since the child also references zero pages, the global counter should be updated as well. Otherwise, during zero-page unmerge, both the global and per-process counters are decremented, causing the global counter to become inconsistent. To fix this, ksm_merging_pages and ksm_rmap_items are reset to 0 during fork, and the global ksm_zero_pages counter is updated with the per-process ksm_zero_pages value inherited by the child. This ensures that KSM statistics remain accurate and reflect the activity of each process correctly. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/cover.1758648700.git.donettom@linux.ibm.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/7b9870eb67ccc0d79593940d9dbd4a0b39b5d396.1758648700.git.donettom@linux.ibm.com Fixes: 7609385337a4 ("ksm: count ksm merging pages for each process") Fixes: cb4df4cae4f2 ("ksm: count allocated ksm rmap_items for each process") Fixes: e2942062e01d ("ksm: count all zero pages placed by KSM") Signed-off-by: Donet Tom Reviewed-by: Chengming Zhou Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Cc: Aboorva Devarajan Cc: David Hildenbrand Cc: Donet Tom Cc: "Ritesh Harjani (IBM)" Cc: Wei Yang Cc: xu xin Cc: [6.6+] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: convert core mm to mm_flags_*() accessors

2025-09-13T23:54:56+00:00

As part of the effort to move to mm->flags becoming a bitmap field, convert existing users to making use of the mm_flags_*() accessors which will, when the conversion is complete, be the only means of accessing mm_struct flags. This will result in the debug output being that of a bitmap output, which will result in a minor change here, but since this is for debug only, this should have no bearing. Otherwise, no functional changes intended. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix typo in comment]Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1eb2266f4408798a55bda00cb04545a3203aa572.1755012943.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes Reviewed-by: Liam R. Howlett Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) Reviewed-by: Baolin Wang Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Cc: Adrian Hunter Cc: Alexander Gordeev Cc: Alexander Shishkin Cc: Al Viro Cc: Andreas Larsson Cc: Andy Lutomirski Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo Cc: Barry Song Cc: Ben Segall Cc: Borislav Betkov Cc: Chengming Zhou Cc: Christian Borntraeger Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: David Rientjes Cc: David S. Miller Cc: Dev Jain Cc: Dietmar Eggemann Cc: Gerald Schaefer Cc: Heiko Carstens Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" Cc: Ian Rogers Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: Jan Kara Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Jason Gunthorpe Cc: Jiri Olsa Cc: John Hubbard Cc: Juri Lelli Cc: Kan Liang Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Marc Rutland Cc: Mariano Pache Cc: "Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" Cc: Mateusz Guzik Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) Cc: Mel Gorman Cc: Michal Hocko Cc: Namhyung kim Cc: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Peter Xu Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Ryan Roberts Cc: Shakeel Butt Cc: Steven Rostedt Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan Cc: Sven Schnelle Cc: Thomas Gleinxer Cc: Valentin Schneider Cc: Vasily Gorbik Cc: Vincent Guittot Cc: Vlastimil Babka Cc: xu xin Cc: Zi Yan Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: update core kernel code to use vm_flags_t consistently

2025-07-10T05:42:13+00:00

The core kernel code is currently very inconsistent in its use of vm_flags_t vs. unsigned long. This prevents us from changing the type of vm_flags_t in the future and is simply not correct, so correct this. While this results in rather a lot of churn, it is a critical pre-requisite for a future planned change to VMA flag type. Additionally, update VMA userland tests to account for the changes. To make review easier and to break things into smaller parts, driver and architecture-specific changes is left for a subsequent commit. The code has been adjusted to cascade the changes across all calling code as far as is needed. We will adjust architecture-specific and driver code in a subsequent patch. Overall, this patch does not introduce any functional change. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/d1588e7bb96d1ea3fe7b9df2c699d5b4592d901d.1750274467.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes Acked-by: Kees Cook Acked-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) Acked-by: Jan Kara Acked-by: Christian Brauner Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka Acked-by: Oscar Salvador Reviewed-by: Pedro Falcato Acked-by: Zi Yan Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Reviewed-by: Anshuman Khandual Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Liam R. Howlett Cc: Catalin Marinas Cc: Jarkko Sakkinen Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: prevent KSM from breaking VMA merging for new VMAs

2025-07-10T05:41:54+00:00

If a user wishes to enable KSM mergeability for an entire process and all fork/exec'd processes that come after it, they use the prctl() PR_SET_MEMORY_MERGE operation. This defaults all newly mapped VMAs to have the VM_MERGEABLE VMA flag set (in order to indicate they are KSM mergeable), as well as setting this flag for all existing VMAs and propagating this across fork/exec. However it also breaks VMA merging for new VMAs, both in the process and all forked (and fork/exec'd) child processes. This is because when a new mapping is proposed, the flags specified will never have VM_MERGEABLE set. However all adjacent VMAs will already have VM_MERGEABLE set, rendering VMAs unmergeable by default. To work around this, we try to set the VM_MERGEABLE flag prior to attempting a merge. In the case of brk() this can always be done. However on mmap() things are more complicated - while KSM is not supported for MAP_SHARED file-backed mappings, it is supported for MAP_PRIVATE file-backed mappings. These mappings may have deprecated .mmap() callbacks specified which could, in theory, adjust flags and thus KSM eligibility. So we check to determine whether this is possible. If not, we set VM_MERGEABLE prior to the merge attempt on mmap(), otherwise we retain the previous behaviour. This fixes VMA merging for all new anonymous mappings, which covers the majority of real-world cases, so we should see a significant improvement in VMA mergeability. For MAP_PRIVATE file-backed mappings, those which implement the .mmap_prepare() hook and shmem are both known to be safe, so we allow these, disallowing all other cases. Also add stubs for newly introduced function invocations to VMA userland testing. [lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com: correctly invoke late KSM check after mmap hook] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/5861f8f6-cf5a-4d82-a062-139fb3f9cddb@lucifer.local Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/3ba660af716d87a18ca5b4e635f2101edeb56340.1748537921.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Fixes: d7597f59d1d3 ("mm: add new api to enable ksm per process") # please no backport! Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes Reviewed-by: Chengming Zhou Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Reviewed-by: Liam R. Howlett Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka Reviewed-by: Xu Xin Cc: Al Viro Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Jan Kara Cc: Jann Horn Cc: Stefan Roesch Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

ksm: add ksm involvement information for each process

2025-01-26T04:22:40+00:00

In /proc//ksm_stat, add two extra ksm involvement items including KSM_mergeable and KSM_merge_any. It helps administrators to better know the system's KSM behavior at process level. ksm_merge_any: yes/no whether the process'mm is added by prctl() into the candidate list of KSM or not, and fully enabled at process level. ksm_mergeable: yes/no whether any VMAs of the process'mm are currently applicable to KSM. Purpose ======= These two items are just to improve the observability of KSM at process level, so that users can know if a certain process has enabled KSM. For example, if without these two items, when we look at /proc//ksm_stat and there's no merging pages found, We are not sure whether it is because KSM was not enabled or because KSM did not successfully merge any pages. Although "mg" in /proc//smaps indicate VM_MERGEABLE, it's opaque and not very obvious for non professionals. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: wording tweaks, per David and akpm] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250110174034304QOb8eDoqtFkp3_t8mqnqc@zte.com.cn Signed-off-by: xu xin Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Tested-by: Mario Casquero Cc: Wang Yaxin Cc: Yang Yang Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: mass constification of folio/page pointers

2024-11-07T22:38:07+00:00

Now that page_pgoff() takes const pointers, we can constify the pointers to a lot of functions. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20241005200121.3231142-5-willy@infradead.org Signed-off-by: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm: move mm flags to mm_types.h

2024-11-06T00:56:26+00:00

The types of mm flags are now far beyond the core dump related features. This patch moves mm flags from linux/sched/coredump.h to linux/mm_types.h. The linux/sched/coredump.h has include the mm_types.h, so the C files related to coredump does not need to change head file inclusion. In addition, the inclusion of sched/coredump.h now can be deleted from the C files that irrelevant to core dump. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240926074922.2721274-1-sunnanyong@huawei.com Signed-off-by: Nanyong Sun Cc: Kefeng Wang Cc: Masami Hiramatsu Cc: Matthew Wilcox Cc: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Peter Zijlstra Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

fork: only invoke khugepaged, ksm hooks if no error

2024-10-29T04:40:39+00:00

There is no reason to invoke these hooks early against an mm that is in an incomplete state. The change in commit d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()") makes this more pertinent as we may be in a state where entries in the maple tree are not yet consistent. Their placement early in dup_mmap() only appears to have been meaningful for early error checking, and since functionally it'd require a very small allocation to fail (in practice 'too small to fail') that'd only occur in the most dire circumstances, meaning the fork would fail or be OOM'd in any case. Since both khugepaged and KSM tracking are there to provide optimisations to memory performance rather than critical functionality, it doesn't really matter all that much if, under such dire memory pressure, we fail to register an mm with these. As a result, we follow the example of commit d2081b2bf819 ("mm: khugepaged: make khugepaged_enter() void function") and make ksm_fork() a void function also. We only expose the mm to these functions once we are done with them and only if no error occurred in the fork operation. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/e0cb8b840c9d1d5a6e84d4f8eff5f3f2022aa10c.1729014377.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Fixes: d24062914837 ("fork: use __mt_dup() to duplicate maple tree in dup_mmap()") Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes Reported-by: Jann Horn Reviewed-by: Liam R. Howlett Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka Reviewed-by: Jann Horn Cc: Alexander Viro Cc: Christian Brauner Cc: Jan Kara Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

mm/ksm: fix ksm_zero_pages accounting

2024-06-06T02:19:26+00:00

We normally ksm_zero_pages++ in ksmd when page is merged with zero page, but ksm_zero_pages-- is done from page tables side, where there is no any accessing protection of ksm_zero_pages. So we can read very exceptional value of ksm_zero_pages in rare cases, such as -1, which is very confusing to users. Fix it by changing to use atomic_long_t, and the same case with the mm->ksm_zero_pages. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20240528-b4-ksm-counters-v3-2-34bb358fdc13@linux.dev Fixes: e2942062e01d ("ksm: count all zero pages placed by KSM") Fixes: 6080d19f0704 ("ksm: add ksm zero pages for each process") Signed-off-by: Chengming Zhou Acked-by: David Hildenbrand Cc: Andrea Arcangeli Cc: Hugh Dickins Cc: Ran Xiaokai Cc: Stefan Roesch Cc: xu xin Cc: Yang Yang Cc: Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton