[PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

[PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

[Nir Lichtman]

From cdc9d82bad7111ab1f132d1264fa6ffa323c26b0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Nir Lichtman <nir@lichtman.org>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 23:57:11 +0300
Subject: [PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

---
 Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst | 10 +++++-----
 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst b/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
index fc8c67833..b4ca3176e 100644
--- a/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
+++ b/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
@@ -20,9 +20,9 @@ Introduction
 
 Kernel stack overflows are often hard to debug and make the kernel
 susceptible to exploits. Problems could show up at a later time making
-it difficult to isolate and root-cause.
+it difficult to pinpoint their root cause.
 
-Virtually-mapped kernel stacks with guard pages causes kernel stack
+Virtually mapped kernel stacks with guard pages cause kernel stack
 overflows to be caught immediately rather than causing difficult to
 diagnose corruptions.
 
@@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ enable this bool configuration option. The requirements are:
 VMAP_STACK
 ----------
 
-VMAP_STACK bool configuration option when enabled allocates virtually
+When enabled, the VMAP_STACK bool configuration option allocates virtually
 mapped task stacks. This option depends on HAVE_ARCH_VMAP_STACK.
 
 - Enable this if you want the use virtually-mapped kernel stacks
@@ -83,7 +83,7 @@ the latest code base:
 Allocation
 -----------
 
-When a new kernel thread is created, thread stack is allocated from
+When a new kernel thread is created, a thread stack is allocated from
 virtually contiguous memory pages from the page level allocator. These
 pages are mapped into contiguous kernel virtual space with PAGE_KERNEL
 protections.
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ with PAGE_KERNEL protections.
 
 Thread stack allocation is initiated from clone(), fork(), vfork(),
 kernel_thread() via kernel_clone(). Leaving a few hints for searching
-the code base to understand when and how thread stack is allocated.
+the code base to understand when and how a thread stack is allocated.
 
 Bulk of the code is in:
 `kernel/fork.c <https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/kernel/fork.c>`.

base-commit: e5b3efbe1ab1793bb49ae07d56d0973267e65112
-- 
2.39.2

Re: [PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

[Jonathan Corbet]

Thanks for working to improve our documentation!

That said...

Nir Lichtman <nir@lichtman.org> writes:

> From cdc9d82bad7111ab1f132d1264fa6ffa323c26b0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Nir Lichtman <nir@lichtman.org>
> Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2024 23:57:11 +0300
> Subject: [PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

All patches need a proper changelog, and this is not it.  Please have a
look at Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst for information on
how to describe your change.

Please pay attention to the section on Signed-off-by while you are there
as well.

> ---
>  Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst | 10 +++++-----
>  1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst b/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
> index fc8c67833..b4ca3176e 100644
> --- a/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/mm/vmalloced-kernel-stacks.rst
> @@ -20,9 +20,9 @@ Introduction
>  
>  Kernel stack overflows are often hard to debug and make the kernel
>  susceptible to exploits. Problems could show up at a later time making
> -it difficult to isolate and root-cause.
> +it difficult to pinpoint their root cause.

This is a change in meaning and is not necessarily an improvement.

The other changes are fine.

Thanks,

jon

Re: [PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

[Randy Dunlap]

Hi,

On 6/19/24 2:07 PM, Nir Lichtman wrote:
> @@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ with PAGE_KERNEL protections.
>  
>  Thread stack allocation is initiated from clone(), fork(), vfork(),
>  kernel_thread() via kernel_clone(). Leaving a few hints for searching
> -the code base to understand when and how thread stack is allocated.
> +the code base to understand when and how a thread stack is allocated.

That last part is still not a sentence AFAICT. How about something like:

>  Thread stack allocation is initiated from clone(), fork(), vfork(),
>  kernel_thread() via kernel_clone(). These are a few hints for searching
>  the code base to understand when and how a thread stack is allocated.

-- 
~Randy

Re: [PATCH] English fixes in vmalloced kernel stacks documentation

[Nir Lichtman]

Thanks! I will include this fix as well in a new patch I will make considering Jonathan's comments as well