<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux-stable.git/drivers/char/mem.c, branch linux-2.6.26.y</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel stable tree</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>make /dev/kmem a config option</title>
<updated>2008-04-29T15:05:59+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arjan van de Ven</name>
<email>arjan@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-04-29T07:58:34+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=b781ecb6a379f155568ef7093e38c6c1d857fe53'/>
<id>b781ecb6a379f155568ef7093e38c6c1d857fe53</id>
<content type='text'>
Make /dev/kmem a config option; /dev/kmem is VERY rarely used, and when
used, it's generally for no good (rootkits tend to be the most common
users).  With this config option, users have the choice to disable
/dev/kmem, saving some size as well.

A patch to disable /dev/kmem has been in the Fedora and RHEL kernels for
4+ years now without any known problems or legit users of /dev/kmem.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make CONFIG_DEVKMEM default to y]
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Make /dev/kmem a config option; /dev/kmem is VERY rarely used, and when
used, it's generally for no good (rootkits tend to be the most common
users).  With this config option, users have the choice to disable
/dev/kmem, saving some size as well.

A patch to disable /dev/kmem has been in the Fedora and RHEL kernels for
4+ years now without any known problems or legit users of /dev/kmem.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: make CONFIG_DEVKMEM default to y]
Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86: PAT use reserve free memtype in mmap of /dev/mem</title>
<updated>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</name>
<email>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-03-19T00:00:21+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=e7f260a276f2c9184fe753732d834b1f6fbe9f17'/>
<id>e7f260a276f2c9184fe753732d834b1f6fbe9f17</id>
<content type='text'>
Use reserve_memtype and free_memtype wrappers for /dev/mem mmaps. The memtype
is slightly complicated here, given that we have to support existing X mappings.
We fallback on UC_MINUS for that.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Use reserve_memtype and free_memtype wrappers for /dev/mem mmaps. The memtype
is slightly complicated here, given that we have to support existing X mappings.
We fallback on UC_MINUS for that.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86: PAT phys_mem_access_prot_allowed for dev/mem mmap</title>
<updated>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</name>
<email>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-03-19T00:00:20+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=f0970c13b6a5b01189aeb196ebb573cf87d95839'/>
<id>f0970c13b6a5b01189aeb196ebb573cf87d95839</id>
<content type='text'>
Introduce phys_mem_access_prot_allowed(), which checks whether the mapping
is possible, without any conflicts and returns success or failure based on that.
phys_mem_access_prot() by itself does not allow failure case. This ability
to return error is needed for PAT where we may have aliasing conflicts.

x86 setup __HAVE_PHYS_MEM_ACCESS_PROT and move x86 specific code out of
/dev/mem into arch specific area.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Introduce phys_mem_access_prot_allowed(), which checks whether the mapping
is possible, without any conflicts and returns success or failure based on that.
phys_mem_access_prot() by itself does not allow failure case. This ability
to return error is needed for PAT where we may have aliasing conflicts.

x86 setup __HAVE_PHYS_MEM_ACCESS_PROT and move x86 specific code out of
/dev/mem into arch specific area.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86: PAT avoid aliasing in /dev/mem read/write</title>
<updated>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</name>
<email>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-03-19T00:00:15+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=e045fb2a988a9a1964059b0d33dbaf18d12f925f'/>
<id>e045fb2a988a9a1964059b0d33dbaf18d12f925f</id>
<content type='text'>
Add xlate and unxlate around /dev/mem read/write. This sets up the mapping
that can be used for /dev/mem read and write without aliasing worries.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Add xlate and unxlate around /dev/mem read/write. This sets up the mapping
that can be used for /dev/mem read and write without aliasing worries.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Suresh Siddha &lt;suresh.b.siddha@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>devmem: add range_is_allowed() check to mmap of /dev/mem</title>
<updated>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Venki Pallipadi</name>
<email>venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-03-07T07:01:47+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=e2beb3eae627211b67e456c53f946cede2ac10d7'/>
<id>e2beb3eae627211b67e456c53f946cede2ac10d7</id>
<content type='text'>
Earlier patch that introduced CONFIG_NONPROMISC_DEVMEM, did the
range_is_allowed() check only for read and write. Add range_is_allowed()
check to mmap of /dev/mem as well.

Changes the paramaters of range_is_allowed() to pfn and size to handle
more than 32 bits of physical address on 32 bit arch cleanly.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Earlier patch that introduced CONFIG_NONPROMISC_DEVMEM, did the
range_is_allowed() check only for read and write. Add range_is_allowed()
check to mmap of /dev/mem as well.

Changes the paramaters of range_is_allowed() to pfn and size to handle
more than 32 bits of physical address on 32 bit arch cleanly.

Signed-off-by: Venkatesh Pallipadi &lt;venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86: introduce /dev/mem restrictions with a config option</title>
<updated>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arjan van de Ven</name>
<email>arjan@linux.intel.com</email>
</author>
<published>2008-04-24T21:40:47+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=ae531c26c5c2a28ca1b35a75b39b3b256850f2c8'/>
<id>ae531c26c5c2a28ca1b35a75b39b3b256850f2c8</id>
<content type='text'>
This patch introduces a restriction on /dev/mem: Only non-memory can be
read or written unless the newly introduced config option is set.

The X server needs access to /dev/mem for the PCI space, but it doesn't need
access to memory; both the file permissions and SELinux permissions of /dev/mem
just make X effectively super-super powerful. With the exception of the
BIOS area, there's just no valid app that uses /dev/mem on actual memory.
Other popular users of /dev/mem are rootkits and the like.
(note: mmap access of memory via /dev/mem was already not allowed since
a really long time)

People who want to use /dev/mem for kernel debugging can enable the config
option.

The restrictions of this patch have been in the Fedora and RHEL kernels for
at least 4 years without any problems.

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This patch introduces a restriction on /dev/mem: Only non-memory can be
read or written unless the newly introduced config option is set.

The X server needs access to /dev/mem for the PCI space, but it doesn't need
access to memory; both the file permissions and SELinux permissions of /dev/mem
just make X effectively super-super powerful. With the exception of the
BIOS area, there's just no valid app that uses /dev/mem on actual memory.
Other popular users of /dev/mem are rootkits and the like.
(note: mmap access of memory via /dev/mem was already not allowed since
a really long time)

People who want to use /dev/mem for kernel debugging can enable the config
option.

The restrictions of this patch have been in the Fedora and RHEL kernels for
at least 4 years without any problems.

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven &lt;arjan@linux.intel.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@elte.hu&gt;
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>x86 merge fallout: uml</title>
<updated>2007-10-29T14:41:32+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Al Viro</name>
<email>viro@ftp.linux.org.uk</email>
</author>
<published>2007-10-29T04:31:16+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=ca5cd877ae699e758e6f26efc11b01bf6631d427'/>
<id>ca5cd877ae699e758e6f26efc11b01bf6631d427</id>
<content type='text'>
Don't undef __i386__/__x86_64__ in uml anymore, make sure that (few) places
that required adjusting the ifdefs got those.

Signed-off-by: Al Viro &lt;viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Don't undef __i386__/__x86_64__ in uml anymore, make sure that (few) places
that required adjusting the ifdefs got those.

Signed-off-by: Al Viro &lt;viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: bdi init hooks</title>
<updated>2007-10-17T15:42:45+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Peter Zijlstra</name>
<email>a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl</email>
</author>
<published>2007-10-17T06:25:46+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=e0bf68ddec4f4f90e5871404be4f1854c17f3120'/>
<id>e0bf68ddec4f4f90e5871404be4f1854c17f3120</id>
<content type='text'>
provide BDI constructor/destructor hooks

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: compile fix]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
provide BDI constructor/destructor hooks

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: compile fix]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra &lt;a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>remove ZERO_PAGE</title>
<updated>2007-10-16T16:42:53+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Nick Piggin</name>
<email>npiggin@suse.de</email>
</author>
<published>2007-10-16T08:24:40+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=557ed1fa2620dc119adb86b34c614e152a629a80'/>
<id>557ed1fa2620dc119adb86b34c614e152a629a80</id>
<content type='text'>
The commit b5810039a54e5babf428e9a1e89fc1940fabff11 contains the note

  A last caveat: the ZERO_PAGE is now refcounted and managed with rmap
  (and thus mapcounted and count towards shared rss).  These writes to
  the struct page could cause excessive cacheline bouncing on big
  systems.  There are a number of ways this could be addressed if it is
  an issue.

And indeed this cacheline bouncing has shown up on large SGI systems.
There was a situation where an Altix system was essentially livelocked
tearing down ZERO_PAGE pagetables when an HPC app aborted during startup.
This situation can be avoided in userspace, but it does highlight the
potential scalability problem with refcounting ZERO_PAGE, and corner
cases where it can really hurt (we don't want the system to livelock!).

There are several broad ways to fix this problem:
1. add back some special casing to avoid refcounting ZERO_PAGE
2. per-node or per-cpu ZERO_PAGES
3. remove the ZERO_PAGE completely

I will argue for 3. The others should also fix the problem, but they
result in more complex code than does 3, with little or no real benefit
that I can see.

Why? Inserting a ZERO_PAGE for anonymous read faults appears to be a
false optimisation: if an application is performance critical, it would
not be doing many read faults of new memory, or at least it could be
expected to write to that memory soon afterwards. If cache or memory use
is critical, it should not be working with a significant number of
ZERO_PAGEs anyway (a more compact representation of zeroes should be
used).

As a sanity check -- mesuring on my desktop system, there are never many
mappings to the ZERO_PAGE (eg. 2 or 3), thus memory usage here should not
increase much without it.

When running a make -j4 kernel compile on my dual core system, there are
about 1,000 mappings to the ZERO_PAGE created per second, but about 1,000
ZERO_PAGE COW faults per second (less than 1 ZERO_PAGE mapping per second
is torn down without being COWed). So removing ZERO_PAGE will save 1,000
page faults per second when running kbuild, while keeping it only saves
less than 1 page clearing operation per second. 1 page clear is cheaper
than a thousand faults, presumably, so there isn't an obvious loss.

Neither the logical argument nor these basic tests give a guarantee of no
regressions. However, this is a reasonable opportunity to try to remove
the ZERO_PAGE from the pagefault path. If it is found to cause regressions,
we can reintroduce it and just avoid refcounting it.

The /dev/zero ZERO_PAGE usage and TLB tricks also get nuked.  I don't see
much use to them except on benchmarks.  All other users of ZERO_PAGE are
converted just to use ZERO_PAGE(0) for simplicity. We can look at
replacing them all and maybe ripping out ZERO_PAGE completely when we are
more satisfied with this solution.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin &lt;npiggin@suse.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus "snif" Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The commit b5810039a54e5babf428e9a1e89fc1940fabff11 contains the note

  A last caveat: the ZERO_PAGE is now refcounted and managed with rmap
  (and thus mapcounted and count towards shared rss).  These writes to
  the struct page could cause excessive cacheline bouncing on big
  systems.  There are a number of ways this could be addressed if it is
  an issue.

And indeed this cacheline bouncing has shown up on large SGI systems.
There was a situation where an Altix system was essentially livelocked
tearing down ZERO_PAGE pagetables when an HPC app aborted during startup.
This situation can be avoided in userspace, but it does highlight the
potential scalability problem with refcounting ZERO_PAGE, and corner
cases where it can really hurt (we don't want the system to livelock!).

There are several broad ways to fix this problem:
1. add back some special casing to avoid refcounting ZERO_PAGE
2. per-node or per-cpu ZERO_PAGES
3. remove the ZERO_PAGE completely

I will argue for 3. The others should also fix the problem, but they
result in more complex code than does 3, with little or no real benefit
that I can see.

Why? Inserting a ZERO_PAGE for anonymous read faults appears to be a
false optimisation: if an application is performance critical, it would
not be doing many read faults of new memory, or at least it could be
expected to write to that memory soon afterwards. If cache or memory use
is critical, it should not be working with a significant number of
ZERO_PAGEs anyway (a more compact representation of zeroes should be
used).

As a sanity check -- mesuring on my desktop system, there are never many
mappings to the ZERO_PAGE (eg. 2 or 3), thus memory usage here should not
increase much without it.

When running a make -j4 kernel compile on my dual core system, there are
about 1,000 mappings to the ZERO_PAGE created per second, but about 1,000
ZERO_PAGE COW faults per second (less than 1 ZERO_PAGE mapping per second
is torn down without being COWed). So removing ZERO_PAGE will save 1,000
page faults per second when running kbuild, while keeping it only saves
less than 1 page clearing operation per second. 1 page clear is cheaper
than a thousand faults, presumably, so there isn't an obvious loss.

Neither the logical argument nor these basic tests give a guarantee of no
regressions. However, this is a reasonable opportunity to try to remove
the ZERO_PAGE from the pagefault path. If it is found to cause regressions,
we can reintroduce it and just avoid refcounting it.

The /dev/zero ZERO_PAGE usage and TLB tricks also get nuked.  I don't see
much use to them except on benchmarks.  All other users of ZERO_PAGE are
converted just to use ZERO_PAGE(0) for simplicity. We can look at
replacing them all and maybe ripping out ZERO_PAGE completely when we are
more satisfied with this solution.

Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin &lt;npiggin@suse.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus "snif" Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'upstream' of git://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/upstream-linus</title>
<updated>2007-07-10T21:48:43+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@woody.linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2007-07-10T21:48:43+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=0f166396e7e8931bb4acfd1a6ea1bd4f0b43f1dd'/>
<id>0f166396e7e8931bb4acfd1a6ea1bd4f0b43f1dd</id>
<content type='text'>
* 'upstream' of git://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/upstream-linus: (62 commits)
  [MIPS] PNX8550: Cleanup proc code.
  [MIPS] WRPPMC: Fix build.
  [MIPS] Yosemite: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Change names of local variables to silence sparse
  [MIPS] SB1: Fix modpost warning.
  [MIPS] PNX: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Alchemy: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Non-FPAFF: Fix warning.
  [MIPS] DEC: Fix modpost warning.
  [MIPS] MIPSsim: Enable MIPSsim virtual network driver.
  [MIPS] Delete Ocelot 3 support.
  [MIPS] remove LASAT Networks platforms support
  [MIPS] Early check for SMTC kernel on non-MT processor
  [MIPS] Add debugfs files to show fpuemu statistics
  [MIPS] Add some debugfs files to debug unaligned accesses
  [MIPS] rbtx4938: Fix secondary PCIC and glue internal NICs
  [MIPS] tc35815: Load MAC address via platform_device
  [MIPS] Move FPU affinity code into separate file.
  [MIPS] Make ioremap() work on TX39/49 special unmapped segment
  [MIPS] rbtx4938: Update and minimize defconfig
  ...
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
* 'upstream' of git://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/upstream-linus: (62 commits)
  [MIPS] PNX8550: Cleanup proc code.
  [MIPS] WRPPMC: Fix build.
  [MIPS] Yosemite: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Change names of local variables to silence sparse
  [MIPS] SB1: Fix modpost warning.
  [MIPS] PNX: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Alchemy: Fix modpost warnings.
  [MIPS] Non-FPAFF: Fix warning.
  [MIPS] DEC: Fix modpost warning.
  [MIPS] MIPSsim: Enable MIPSsim virtual network driver.
  [MIPS] Delete Ocelot 3 support.
  [MIPS] remove LASAT Networks platforms support
  [MIPS] Early check for SMTC kernel on non-MT processor
  [MIPS] Add debugfs files to show fpuemu statistics
  [MIPS] Add some debugfs files to debug unaligned accesses
  [MIPS] rbtx4938: Fix secondary PCIC and glue internal NICs
  [MIPS] tc35815: Load MAC address via platform_device
  [MIPS] Move FPU affinity code into separate file.
  [MIPS] Make ioremap() work on TX39/49 special unmapped segment
  [MIPS] rbtx4938: Update and minimize defconfig
  ...
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
