Re: [PATCH STABLE 5.10] mm/memory: add non-anonymous page check in the copy_present_page()

Hugh Dickins
2022-10-28T01:32:13Z

Reinstating Cc stable, which I removed just before the discussion settled.

On Thu, 27 Oct 2022, Peter Xu wrote:
> ...
>
> After a re-read and 2nd thought, I think David has a valid point in that we
> shouldn't have special handling of !anon pages on CoW during fork(),
> because that seems to be against the fundamental concept of fork().
>
> So now I think I agree the !Anon original check does look a bit cleaner,
> and also make fork() behavior matching with the old/new kernels, irrelevant
> of the pin mess.

Thanks Peter. So Yuanzheng's patch for 5.10 is exactly right.

Sorry for leading everyone astray: my mistake was to suppose that
its !PageAnon check was simply to avoid the later BUG_ON(!anon_vma):
whereas David and Peter now agree that it actually corrects the
semantics for fork() on file pages.

I lift my hold on Yuanzheng's patch: nobody actually said "Acked-by",
but I think the discussion and resolution have given better than that.
(No 3rd thoughts please!)

Hugh