Re: Linux 6.12.99

[Dominique Martinet <asmadeus@codewreck.org>]

Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote on Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 06:17:30PM +0200:
> Lorenzo Stoakes (1):
>       mm: refactor mm_access() to not return NULL

FWIW if anyone else cares and looks for this, this backport was required
due to a NULL deref in 6.12.98 (and likely .97 as well if commit
4bfe8c481846 ("proc: protect ptrace_may_access() with exec_update_lock
(part 1)") is indeed the culprit, I didn't check):
https://lore.kernel.org/all/2026072933-widow-grouped-f9e4@gregkh/T/#u


Greg & Sasha,
this is purely selfish and I'm grateful for all the work you two do
backporting patches, but (for next times) it'd be great if the backport
commit could also point at why it is backported after all this time
(for example add a comment or even just the above link between the
original sign-off and your's) -- it doesn't have to be much, but it took
me a while to find (I was curious because this was an urgent release
without -rc, with a single 2 year old patch branded as refactor not
fixing anything obvious...)

Ultimately it doesn't change the fact that "all users must upgrade" as
said in the announce, but I need to judge the urgency of the upgrade, so
having a rationale is extremely useful.
If backported commits fix something obvious then there's nothing to add,
but in this case I believe I'm not the only one who'd puzzle over it (if
someone is actually looking...)

Thanks!
-- 
Dominique Martinet