Go to file
Linus Torvalds 574823bfab Change mincore() to count "mapped" pages rather than "cached" pages
The semantics of what "in core" means for the mincore() system call are
somewhat unclear, but Linux has always (since 2.3.52, which is when
mincore() was initially done) treated it as "page is available in page
cache" rather than "page is mapped in the mapping".

The problem with that traditional semantic is that it exposes a lot of
system cache state that it really probably shouldn't, and that users
shouldn't really even care about.

So let's try to avoid that information leak by simply changing the
semantics to be that mincore() counts actual mapped pages, not pages
that might be cheaply mapped if they were faulted (note the "might be"
part of the old semantics: being in the cache doesn't actually guarantee
that you can access them without IO anyway, since things like network
filesystems may have to revalidate the cache before use).

In many ways the old semantics were somewhat insane even aside from the
information leak issue.  From the very beginning (and that beginning is
a long time ago: 2.3.52 was released in March 2000, I think), the code
had a comment saying

  Later we can get more picky about what "in core" means precisely.

and this is that "later".  Admittedly it is much later than is really
comfortable.

NOTE! This is a real semantic change, and it is for example known to
change the output of "fincore", since that program literally does a
mmmap without populating it, and then doing "mincore()" on that mapping
that doesn't actually have any pages in it.

I'm hoping that nobody actually has any workflow that cares, and the
info leak is real.

We may have to do something different if it turns out that people have
valid reasons to want the old semantics, and if we can limit the
information leak sanely.

Cc: Kevin Easton <kevin@guarana.org>
Cc: Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>
Cc: Masatake YAMATO <yamato@redhat.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2019-01-06 13:43:02 -08:00
arch Fix 'acccess_ok()' on alpha and SH 2019-01-06 13:25:45 -08:00
block for-4.21/block-20190102 2019-01-02 18:49:58 -08:00
certs export.h: remove VMLINUX_SYMBOL() and VMLINUX_SYMBOL_STR() 2018-08-22 23:21:44 +09:00
crypto Kconfig updates for v4.21 2018-12-29 13:03:29 -08:00
Documentation Add Adiantum support for fscrypt 2019-01-06 12:21:11 -08:00
drivers chrome platform changes for v4.21 2019-01-06 11:40:06 -08:00
firmware firmware: refactor firmware/Makefile 2018-12-23 10:10:32 +09:00
fs Add Adiantum support for fscrypt 2019-01-06 12:21:11 -08:00
include Add Adiantum support for fscrypt 2019-01-06 12:21:11 -08:00
init Merge branch 'mount.part1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-01-05 13:25:58 -08:00
ipc ipc: IPCMNI limit check for semmni 2018-10-31 08:54:14 -07:00
kernel dma-mapping fixes for Linux 4.21-rc1 2019-01-06 11:47:26 -08:00
lib for-linus-20190104 2019-01-05 18:29:13 -08:00
LICENSES This is a fairly typical cycle for documentation. There's some welcome 2018-10-24 18:01:11 +01:00
mm Change mincore() to count "mapped" pages rather than "cached" pages 2019-01-06 13:43:02 -08:00
net A fairly quiet round: a couple of messenger performance improvements 2019-01-05 13:58:08 -08:00
samples Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hid/hid 2019-01-05 17:53:40 -08:00
scripts Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-01-05 13:18:59 -08:00
security Merge branch 'mount.part1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-01-05 13:25:58 -08:00
sound Remove 'type' argument from access_ok() function 2019-01-03 18:57:57 -08:00
tools Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2019-01-05 09:16:18 -08:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2019-01-05 09:16:18 -08:00
.clang-format page cache: Convert find_get_pages_contig to XArray 2018-10-21 10:46:34 -04:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore kbuild: Add support for DT binding schema checks 2018-12-13 09:41:32 -06:00
.mailmap A few early MIPS fixes for 4.21: 2019-01-05 12:48:25 -08:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS Add CREDITS entry for Shaohua Li 2019-01-04 14:27:09 -07:00
Kbuild kbuild: remove unused cmd_gentimeconst 2018-12-25 00:10:30 +09:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS chrome platform changes for v4.21 2019-01-06 11:40:06 -08:00
Makefile Kbuild updates for v4.21 2018-12-29 12:03:17 -08:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.