On 11/18/25 11:17, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
It is useful to be able to designate that certain flags are 'sticky', that
is, if two VMAs are merged one with a flag of this nature and one without,
the merged VMA sets this flag.
As a result we ignore these flags for the purposes of determining VMA flag
differences between VMAs being considered for merge.
This patch therefore updates the VMA merge logic to perform this action,
with flags possessing this property being described in the VM_STICKY
bitmap.
Those flags which ought to be ignored for the purposes of VMA merge are
described in the VM_IGNORE_MERGE bitmap, which the VMA merge logic is also
updated to use.
As part of this change we place VM_SOFTDIRTY in VM_IGNORE_MERGE as it
already had this behaviour, alongside VM_STICKY as sticky flags by
implication must not disallow merge.
Ultimately it seems that we should make VM_SOFTDIRTY a sticky flag in its
own right, but this change is out of scope for this series.
The only sticky flag designated as such is VM_MAYBE_GUARD, so as a result
of this change, once the VMA flag is set upon guard region installation,
VMAs with guard ranges will now not have their merge behaviour impacted as
a result and can be freely merged with other VMAs without VM_MAYBE_GUARD
set.
Also update the comments for vma_modify_flags() to directly reference
sticky flags now we have established the concept.
We also update the VMA userland tests to account for the changes.
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Pedro Falcato <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <[email protected]>
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Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) <[email protected]>
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Cheers
David
