From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932696AbaKMMen (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Nov 2014 07:34:43 -0500 Received: from eddie.linux-mips.org ([148.251.95.138]:33512 "EHLO cvs.linux-mips.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932419AbaKMMem (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Nov 2014 07:34:42 -0500 Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 13:24:06 +0100 From: Ralf Baechle To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-mips@linux-mips.org, libc-alpha@sourceware.org Subject: Impact of removing VM_EXEC from brk area Message-ID: <20141113122406.GA19763@linux-mips.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.23 (2014-03-12) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org A patch to remove VM_EXEC from VM_DATA_DEFAULT_FLAGS for MIPS has been submitted to me with the primary motivation for this change being some performance improvment. In other words, the patch would remove execute permission from a process brk area. It's however unclear to me how much software wreckage would result from such a change, even if the execute permission for the stack area remains unchanged. So, what would break? Thanks, Ralf