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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-04-19 08:01:17 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2026-04-19 08:01:17 -0700
commit40735a683bf844a453d7a0f91e5e3daa0abc659b (patch)
treee6012cae8a2d6fc4195dba178b7eec7c5ab4362c /Documentation/admin-guide
parentfaeab166167f5787719eb8683661fd41a3bb1514 (diff)
parent0b5e8d7999076ac3c490fc18376a404e2626abff (diff)
downloadlwn-40735a683bf844a453d7a0f91e5e3daa0abc659b.tar.gz
lwn-40735a683bf844a453d7a0f91e5e3daa0abc659b.zip
Merge tag 'mm-stable-2026-04-18-02-14' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
Pull more MM updates from Andrew Morton: - "Eliminate Dying Memory Cgroup" (Qi Zheng and Muchun Song) Address the longstanding "dying memcg problem". A situation wherein a no-longer-used memory control group will hang around for an extended period pointlessly consuming memory - "fix unexpected type conversions and potential overflows" (Qi Zheng) Fix a couple of potential 32-bit/64-bit issues which were identified during review of the "Eliminate Dying Memory Cgroup" series - "kho: history: track previous kernel version and kexec boot count" (Breno Leitao) Use Kexec Handover (KHO) to pass the previous kernel's version string and the number of kexec reboots since the last cold boot to the next kernel, and print it at boot time - "liveupdate: prevent double preservation" (Pasha Tatashin) Teach LUO to avoid managing the same file across different active sessions - "liveupdate: Fix module unloading and unregister API" (Pasha Tatashin) Address an issue with how LUO handles module reference counting and unregistration during module unloading - "zswap pool per-CPU acomp_ctx simplifications" (Kanchana Sridhar) Simplify and clean up the zswap crypto compression handling and improve the lifecycle management of zswap pool's per-CPU acomp_ctx resources - "mm/damon/core: fix damon_call()/damos_walk() vs kdmond exit race" (SeongJae Park) Address unlikely but possible leaks and deadlocks in damon_call() and damon_walk() - "mm/damon/core: validate damos_quota_goal->nid" (SeongJae Park) Fix a couple of root-only wild pointer dereferences - "Docs/admin-guide/mm/damon: warn commit_inputs vs other params race" (SeongJae Park) Update the DAMON documentation to warn operators about potential races which can occur if the commit_inputs parameter is altered at the wrong time - "Minor hmm_test fixes and cleanups" (Alistair Popple) Bugfixes and a cleanup for the HMM kernel selftests - "Modify memfd_luo code" (Chenghao Duan) Cleanups, simplifications and speedups to the memfd_lou code - "mm, kvm: allow uffd support in guest_memfd" (Mike Rapoport) Support for userfaultfd in guest_memfd - "selftests/mm: skip several tests when thp is not available" (Chunyu Hu) Fix several issues in the selftests code which were causing breakage when the tests were run on CONFIG_THP=n kernels - "mm/mprotect: micro-optimization work" (Pedro Falcato) A couple of nice speedups for mprotect() - "MAINTAINERS: update KHO and LIVE UPDATE entries" (Pratyush Yadav) Document upcoming changes in the maintenance of KHO, LUO, memfd_luo, kexec, crash, kdump and probably other kexec-based things - they are being moved out of mm.git and into a new git tree * tag 'mm-stable-2026-04-18-02-14' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm: (121 commits) MAINTAINERS: add page cache reviewer mm/vmscan: avoid false-positive -Wuninitialized warning MAINTAINERS: update Dave's kdump reviewer email address MAINTAINERS: drop include/linux/liveupdate from LIVE UPDATE MAINTAINERS: drop include/linux/kho/abi/ from KHO MAINTAINERS: update KHO and LIVE UPDATE maintainers MAINTAINERS: update kexec/kdump maintainers entries mm/migrate_device: remove dead migration entry check in migrate_vma_collect_huge_pmd() selftests: mm: skip charge_reserved_hugetlb without killall userfaultfd: allow registration of ranges below mmap_min_addr mm/vmstat: fix vmstat_shepherd double-scheduling vmstat_update mm/hugetlb: fix early boot crash on parameters without '=' separator zram: reject unrecognized type= values in recompress_store() docs: proc: document ProtectionKey in smaps mm/mprotect: special-case small folios when applying permissions mm/mprotect: move softleaf code out of the main function mm: remove '!root_reclaim' checking in should_abort_scan() mm/sparse: fix comment for section map alignment mm/page_io: use sio->len for PSWPIN accounting in sio_read_complete() selftests/mm: transhuge_stress: skip the test when thp not available ...
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/lru_sort.rst4
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/reclaim.rst4
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/mm/kho.rst41
3 files changed, 48 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/lru_sort.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/lru_sort.rst
index a7dea7c75a9b..14cc6b2db897 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/lru_sort.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/lru_sort.rst
@@ -79,6 +79,10 @@ of parametrs except ``enabled`` again. Once the re-reading is done, this
parameter is set as ``N``. If invalid parameters are found while the
re-reading, DAMON_LRU_SORT will be disabled.
+Once ``Y`` is written to this parameter, the user must not write to any
+parameters until reading ``commit_inputs`` again returns ``N``. If users
+violate this rule, the kernel may exhibit undefined behavior.
+
active_mem_bp
-------------
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/reclaim.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/reclaim.rst
index 47854c461706..d7a0225b4950 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/reclaim.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/damon/reclaim.rst
@@ -71,6 +71,10 @@ of parametrs except ``enabled`` again. Once the re-reading is done, this
parameter is set as ``N``. If invalid parameters are found while the
re-reading, DAMON_RECLAIM will be disabled.
+Once ``Y`` is written to this parameter, the user must not write to any
+parameters until reading ``commit_inputs`` again returns ``N``. If users
+violate this rule, the kernel may exhibit undefined behavior.
+
min_age
-------
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/kho.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/kho.rst
index cb9a20f64920..2c26e560bd78 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/kho.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/kho.rst
@@ -42,6 +42,45 @@ For example, if you used ``reserve_mem`` command line parameter to create
an early memory reservation, the new kernel will have that memory at the
same physical address as the old kernel.
+Kexec Metadata
+==============
+
+KHO automatically tracks metadata about the kexec chain, passing information
+about the previous kernel to the next kernel. This feature helps diagnose
+bugs that only reproduce when kexecing from specific kernel versions.
+
+On each KHO kexec, the kernel logs the previous kernel's version and the
+number of kexec reboots since the last cold boot::
+
+ [ 0.000000] KHO: exec from: 6.19.0-rc4-next-20260107 (count 1)
+
+The metadata includes:
+
+``previous_release``
+ The kernel version string (from ``uname -r``) of the kernel that
+ initiated the kexec.
+
+``kexec_count``
+ The number of kexec boots since the last cold boot. On cold boot,
+ this counter starts at 0 and increments with each kexec. This helps
+ identify issues that only manifest after multiple consecutive kexec
+ reboots.
+
+Use Cases
+---------
+
+This metadata is particularly useful for debugging kexec transition bugs,
+where a buggy kernel kexecs into a new kernel and the bug manifests only
+in the second kernel. Examples of such bugs include:
+
+- Memory corruption from the previous kernel affecting the new kernel
+- Incorrect hardware state left by the previous kernel
+- Firmware/ACPI state issues that only appear in kexec scenarios
+
+At scale, correlating crashes to the previous kernel version enables
+faster root cause analysis when issues only occur in specific kernel
+transition scenarios.
+
debugfs Interfaces
==================
@@ -80,5 +119,5 @@ stabilized.
it finished to interpret their metadata.
``/sys/kernel/debug/kho/in/sub_fdts/``
- Similar to ``kho/out/sub_fdts/``, but contains sub FDT blobs
+ Similar to ``kho/out/sub_fdts/``, but contains sub blobs
of KHO producers passed from the old kernel.