From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: mm-commits@vger.kernel.org,ziy@nvidia.com,vbabka@kernel.org,stable@vger.kernel.org,sj@kernel.org,samarth.colleges@gmail.com,minchan@kernel.org,mhocko@suse.com,ljs@kernel.org,liam@infradead.org,jannh@google.com,hannes@cmpxchg.org,gourry@gourry.net,david@kernel.org,pfalcato@suse.de,akpm@linux-foundation.org
Subject: [merged mm-stable] mm-madvise-atomically-clear-the-young-bit-on-thp-madv_cold.patch removed from -mm tree
Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2026 02:01:45 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20261024090146.3229E1F01825@smtp.kernel.org> (raw)
The quilt patch titled
Subject: mm/madvise: atomically clear the young bit on THP MADV_COLD
has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was
mm-madvise-atomically-clear-the-young-bit-on-thp-madv_cold.patch
This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-stable branch
of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
------------------------------------------------------
From: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Subject: mm/madvise: atomically clear the young bit on THP MADV_COLD
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2026 20:17:19 +0100
As-is, madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range() discards the hardware young bit
by invalidating the PMD, doing pmd_mkold() and subsequently writing to the
pmd again. However, it does so in a racy manner, looking at a
possibly-stale snapshot. It's entirely possible that a write elsewhere
set the hardware D bit, which this logic now loses.
Fix it by using pmdp_test_and_clear_young(). This is an atomic
modification of the PMD entry, and thus safe against any possible racing
writes. As a (nice) side-effect, this elides one non-required TLB flush
in pmdp_invalidate().
This bug can interact with the swapping system in complicated ways,
leading to data loss. For instance, if a folio is marked lazyfree, but
was later read from, and then MADV_COLD'd while racing a write to that
same THP, dropping the dirty bit may lead to data loss as
reclaim/MADV_PAGEOUT drops the "clean" anon folio:
T0 T1
================================================================
MADV_FREE(thp) |
folio marked lazyfree |
read(thp) |
PMD marked young by hardware |
| MADV_COLD(thp)
write(thp) | if (pmd_young(pmd)) {
PMD marked dirty by hardware | set(pmdp, pmd_mkold(pmd));
MADV_PAGEOUT/reclaim |
dirty bit may or may not be |
set |
reclaim/pageout may drop |
the folio |
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20261013191719.95502-1-pfalcato@suse.de
Fixes: 9c276cc65a58 ("mm: introduce MADV_COLD")
Signed-off-by: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Reported-by: Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@gmail.com>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20261011132227.413217-1-samarth.colleges@gmail.com/
Reviewed-by: Gregory Price (Meta) <gourry@gourry.net>
Acked-by: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) <ljs@kernel.org>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: SJ Park <sj@kernel.org>
Cc: Liam R. Howlett <liam@infradead.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
---
mm/madvise.c | 5 +----
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-)
--- a/mm/madvise.c~mm-madvise-atomically-clear-the-young-bit-on-thp-madv_cold
+++ a/mm/madvise.c
@@ -430,10 +430,7 @@ static int madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_r
}
if (!pageout && pmd_young(orig_pmd)) {
- pmdp_invalidate(vma, addr, pmd);
- orig_pmd = pmd_mkold(orig_pmd);
-
- set_pmd_at(mm, addr, pmd, orig_pmd);
+ pmdp_test_and_clear_young(vma, addr, pmd);
tlb_remove_pmd_tlb_entry(tlb, pmd, addr);
}
_
Patches currently in -mm which might be from pfalcato@suse.de are
reply other threads:[~2026-10-24 9:01 UTC|newest]
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