Linux kernel ============ The Linux kernel is the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware, system resources, and provides the fundamental services for all other software. Quick Start ----------- * Report a bug: See Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst * Get the latest kernel: https://kernel.org * Build the kernel: See Documentation/admin-guide/quickly-build-trimmed-linux.rst * Join the community: https://lore.kernel.org/ Essential Documentation ----------------------- All users should be familiar with: * Building requirements: Documentation/process/changes.rst * Code of Conduct: Documentation/process/code-of-conduct.rst * License: See COPYING Documentation can be built with make htmldocs or viewed online at: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/ Who Are You? ============ Find your role below: * New Kernel Developer - Getting started with kernel development * Academic Researcher - Studying kernel internals and architecture * Security Expert - Hardening and vulnerability analysis * Backport/Maintenance Engineer - Maintaining stable kernels * System Administrator - Configuring and troubleshooting * Maintainer - Leading subsystems and reviewing patches * Hardware Vendor - Writing drivers for new hardware * Distribution Maintainer - Packaging kernels for distros * AI Coding Assistant - LLMs and AI-powered development tools For Specific Users ================== New Kernel Developer -------------------- Welcome! Start your kernel development journey here: * Getting Started: Documentation/process/development-process.rst * Your First Patch: Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst * Coding Style: Documentation/process/coding-style.rst * Build System: Documentation/kbuild/index.rst * Development Tools: Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst * Kernel Hacking Guide: Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst * Core APIs: Documentation/core-api/index.rst Academic Researcher ------------------- Explore the kernel's architecture and internals: * Researcher Guidelines: Documentation/process/researcher-guidelines.rst * Memory Management: Documentation/mm/index.rst * Scheduler: Documentation/scheduler/index.rst * Networking Stack: Documentation/networking/index.rst * Filesystems: Documentation/filesystems/index.rst * RCU (Read-Copy Update): Documentation/RCU/index.rst * Locking Primitives: Documentation/locking/index.rst * Power Management: Documentation/power/index.rst Security Expert --------------- Security documentation and hardening guides: * Security Documentation: Documentation/security/index.rst * LSM Development: Documentation/security/lsm-development.rst * Self Protection: Documentation/security/self-protection.rst * Reporting Vulnerabilities: Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst * CVE Procedures: Documentation/process/cve.rst * Embargoed Hardware Issues: Documentation/process/embargoed-hardware-issues.rst * Security Features: Documentation/userspace-api/seccomp_filter.rst Backport/Maintenance Engineer ----------------------------- Maintain and stabilize kernel versions: * Stable Kernel Rules: Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst * Backporting Guide: Documentation/process/backporting.rst * Applying Patches: Documentation/process/applying-patches.rst * Subsystem Profile: Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst * Git for Maintainers: Documentation/maintainer/configure-git.rst System Administrator -------------------- Configure, tune, and troubleshoot Linux systems: * Admin Guide: Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst * Kernel Parameters: Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst * Sysctl Tuning: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst * Tracing/Debugging: Documentation/trace/index.rst * Performance Security: Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst * Hardware Monitoring: Documentation/hwmon/index.rst Maintainer ---------- Lead kernel subsystems and manage contributions: * Maintainer Handbook: Documentation/maintainer/index.rst * Pull Requests: Documentation/maintainer/pull-requests.rst * Managing Patches: Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst * Rebasing and Merging: Documentation/maintainer/rebasing-and-merging.rst * Development Process: Documentation/process/maintainer-handbooks.rst * Maintainer Entry Profile: Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst * Git Configuration: Documentation/maintainer/configure-git.rst Hardware Vendor --------------- Write drivers and support new hardware: * Driver API Guide: Documentation/driver-api/index.rst * Driver Model: Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/driver.rst * Device Drivers: Documentation/driver-api/infrastructure.rst * Bus Types: Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/bus.rst * Device Tree Bindings: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/ * Power Management: Documentation/driver-api/pm/index.rst * DMA API: Documentation/core-api/dma-api.rst Distribution Maintainer ----------------------- Package and distribute the kernel: * Stable Kernel Rules: Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst * ABI Documentation: Documentation/ABI/README * Kernel Configuration: Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.rst * Module Signing: Documentation/admin-guide/module-signing.rst * Kernel Parameters: Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst * Tainted Kernels: Documentation/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.rst AI Coding Assistant ------------------- CRITICAL: If you are an LLM or AI-powered coding assistant, you MUST read and follow the AI coding assistants documentation before contributing to the Linux kernel: * Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst This documentation contains essential requirements about licensing, attribution, and the Developer Certificate of Origin that all AI tools must comply with. Communication and Support ========================= * Mailing Lists: https://lore.kernel.org/ * IRC: #kernelnewbies on irc.oftc.net * Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ * MAINTAINERS file: Lists subsystem maintainers and mailing lists * Email Clients: Documentation/process/email-clients.rst
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When CONFIG_DEFERRED_STRUCT_PAGE_INIT is enabled, freeing of reserved
memory before the memory map is fully initialized in deferred_init_memmap()
would cause access to uninitialized struct pages and may crash when
accessing spurious list pointers, like was recently discovered during
discussion about memory leaks in x86 EFI code [1].
The trace below is from an attempt to call free_reserved_page() before
page_alloc_init_late():
[ 0.076840] BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffce1a005a0788
[ 0.078226] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
[ 0.078226] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
[ 0.078226] PGD 0 P4D 0
[ 0.078226] Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI
[ 0.078226] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.12.68-92.123.amzn2023.x86_64 #1
[ 0.078226] Hardware name: Amazon EC2 t3a.nano/, BIOS 1.0 10/16/2017
[ 0.078226] RIP: 0010:__list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0x32/0xb0
...
[ 0.078226] __free_one_page+0x170/0x520
[ 0.078226] free_pcppages_bulk+0x151/0x1e0
[ 0.078226] free_unref_page_commit+0x263/0x320
[ 0.078226] free_unref_page+0x2c8/0x5b0
[ 0.078226] ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f
[ 0.078226] free_reserved_page+0x1c/0x30
[ 0.078226] memblock_free_late+0x6c/0xc0
Currently there are not many callers of free_reserved_area() and they all
appear to be at the right timings.
Still, in order to protect against problematic code moves or additions of
new callers add a warning that will inform that reserved pages cannot be
freed until the memory map is fully initialized.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/e5d5a1105d90ee1e7fe7eafaed2ed03bbad0c46b.camel@kernel.crashing.org/
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-10-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
It shouldn't be responsibility of memblock users to detect if they free
memory allocated from memblock late and should use memblock_free_late().
Make memblock_free() and memblock_phys_free() take care of late memory
freeing and drop memblock_free_late().
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-9-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
On architectures that keep memblock after boot, freeing of reserved memory
with free_reserved_area() is paired with an update of memblock arrays,
usually by a call to memblock_free().
Make free_reserved_area() directly update memblock.reserved when
ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK is enabled.
Remove the now-redundant explicit memblock_free() call from
arm64::free_initmem() and the #ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_KEEP_MEMBLOCK block
from the generic free_initrd_mem().
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-8-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
There are two functions that release pages to the buddy allocator late in
the boot: free_reserved_area() and memblock_free_late().
Currently they are using different underlying functionality,
free_reserved_area() runs each page being freed via free_reserved_page()
and memblock_free_late() uses memblock_free_pages() -> __free_pages_core(),
but in the end they both boil down to a loop that frees a range page by
page.
Extract the loop frees pages from free_reserved_area() into a helper and
use that helper in memblock_free_late().
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-7-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
There are two potential problems in free_reserved_area():
* it may free a page with not-existent buddy page
* it may be passed a virtual address from an alias mapping that won't
be properly translated by virt_to_page(), for example a symbol on arm64
While first issue is quite theoretical and the second one does not manifest
itself because all the callers do the right thing, it is easy to make
free_reserved_area() robust enough to avoid these potential issues.
Replace the loop by virtual address with a loop by pfn that uses
for_each_valid_pfn() and use __pa() or __pa_symbol() depending on the
virtual mapping alias to correctly determine the loop boundaries.
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-6-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
free_reserved_area() is related to memblock as it frees reserved memory
back to the buddy allocator, similar to what memblock_free_late() does.
Move free_reserved_area() to mm/memblock.c to prepare for further
consolidation of the functions that free reserved memory.
No functional changes.
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-5-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka (SUSE) <vbabka@kernel.org>
opal-core allocates buffers with alloc_pages_exact(), but then
marks them as reserved and frees using free_reserved_area().
This is completely unnecessary and the pages allocated with
alloc_pages_exact() can be naturally freed with free_pages_exact().
Replace freeing of memory in opalcore_cleanup() with
free_pages_exact() and simplify allocation code so that it won't mark
allocated pages as reserved.
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-4-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
fadump allocates buffers with alloc_pages_exact(), but then marks them
as reserved and frees using free_reserved_area().
This is completely unnecessary and the pages allocated with
alloc_pages_exact() can be naturally freed with free_pages_exact().
Replace freeing of memory in fadump_free_buffer() with
free_pages_exact() and simplify allocation code so that it won't mark
allocated pages as reserved.
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-3-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
free_reserved_area() expects end parameter to point to the first address
after the area, but reserve_mem_release_by_name() passes it the last
address inside the area.
Remove subtraction of one in calculation of the area end.
Fixes: 74e2498ccf7b ("mm/memblock: Add reserved memory release function")
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323074836.3653702-2-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
reserve_bootmem_region() is only called from
memmap_init_reserved_pages() and it was in mm/mm_init.c because of its
dependecies on static init_deferred_page().
Since init_deferred_page() is not static anymore, move
reserve_bootmem_region(), rename it to memmap_init_reserved_range() and
make it static.
Update the comment describing it to better reflect what the function
does and drop bogus comment about reserved pages in free_bootmem_page().
Update memblock test stubs to reflect the core changes.
Reviewed-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (Oracle) <ljs@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260323072042.3651061-1-rppt@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
When using the "reserve_mem" parameter, users aim at having an
area that (hopefully) persists across boots, so pstore infrastructure
(like ramoops module) can make use of that to save oops/ftrace logs,
for example.
There is no easy way to determine if this kernel parameter is properly
set though; the kernel doesn't show information about this memory in
memblock debugfs, neither in /proc/iomem nor dmesg. This is a relevant
information for tools like kdumpst[0], to determine if it's reliable
to use the reserved area as ramoops persistent storage; checking only
/proc/cmdline is not sufficient as it doesn't tell if the reservation
effectively succeeded or not.
Add here a new file under memblock debugfs showing properly set memory
reservations, with name and size as passed to "reserve_mem". Notice that
if no "reserve_mem=" is passed on command-line or if the reservation
attempts fail, the file is not created.
[0] https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/kdumpst
Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli <gpiccoli@igalia.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260324012839.1991765-2-gpiccoli@igalia.com
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
The parsing of kernel parameter "reserve_mem=" is subject to
multiple failures, like duplicate naming, malformed expression
or even lack of available memory. Right now, all of these fail
silently. Let's add some messages so the kernel log can provide
useful information in case of failures.
Reviewed-by: SeongJae Park <sj@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli <gpiccoli@igalia.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260324012839.1991765-1-gpiccoli@igalia.com
Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
Pull SCSI fixes from James Bottomley:
"The one core change is a re-roll of the tag allocation fix from the
last pull request that uses the correct goto to unroll all the
allocations. The remianing fixes are all small ones in drivers"
* tag 'scsi-fixes' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/jejb/scsi:
scsi: hisi_sas: Fix NULL pointer exception during user_scan()
scsi: qla2xxx: Completely fix fcport double free
scsi: ufs: core: Fix SError in ufshcd_rtc_work() during UFS suspend
scsi: core: Fix error handling for scsi_alloc_sdev()
Pull probes fixes from Masami Hiramatsu:
- Avoid crash when rmmod/insmod after ftrace killed
This fixes a kernel crash caused by kprobes on the symbol in a module
which is unloaded after ftrace_kill() is called.
- Remove unneeded warnings from __arm_kprobe_ftrace()
Remove unneeded WARN messages which can be triggered if the kprobe is
using ftrace and it fails to enable the ftrace. Since kprobes
correctly handle such failure, we don't need to warn it.
* tag 'probes-fixes-v7.0-rc3' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace:
kprobes: Remove unneeded warnings from __arm_kprobe_ftrace()
kprobes: avoid crash when rmmod/insmod after ftrace killed
user_scan() invokes updated sas_user_scan() for channel 0, and if
successful, iteratively scans remaining channels (1 to shost->max_channel)
via scsi_scan_host_selected() in commit 37c4e72b0651 ("scsi: Fix
sas_user_scan() to handle wildcard and multi-channel scans"). However,
hisi_sas supports only one channel, and the current value of max_channel is
1. sas_user_scan() for channel 1 will trigger the following NULL pointer
exception:
[ 441.554662] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 00000000000008b0
[ 441.554699] Mem abort info:
[ 441.554710] ESR = 0x0000000096000004
[ 441.554718] EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[ 441.554723] SET = 0, FnV = 0
[ 441.554726] EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[ 441.554730] FSC = 0x04: level 0 translation fault
[ 441.554735] Data abort info:
[ 441.554737] ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000004, ISS2 = 0x00000000
[ 441.554742] CM = 0, WnR = 0, TnD = 0, TagAccess = 0
[ 441.554747] GCS = 0, Overlay = 0, DirtyBit = 0, Xs = 0
[ 441.554752] user pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp=00000828377a6000
[ 441.554757] [00000000000008b0] pgd=0000000000000000, p4d=0000000000000000
[ 441.554769] Internal error: Oops: 0000000096000004 [#1] SMP
[ 441.629589] Modules linked in: arm_spe_pmu arm_smmuv3_pmu tpm_tis_spi hisi_uncore_sllc_pmu hisi_uncore_pa_pmu hisi_uncore_l3c_pmu hisi_uncore_hha_pmu hisi_uncore_ddrc_pmu hisi_uncore_cpa_pmu hns3_pmu hisi_ptt hisi_pcie_pmu tpm_tis_core spidev spi_hisi_sfc_v3xx hisi_uncore_pmu spi_dw_mmio fuse hclge hclge_common hisi_sec2 hisi_hpre hisi_zip hisi_qm hns3 hisi_sas_v3_hw sm3_ce sbsa_gwdt hnae3 hisi_sas_main uacce hisi_dma i2c_hisi dm_mirror dm_region_hash dm_log dm_mod
[ 441.670819] CPU: 46 UID: 0 PID: 6994 Comm: bash Kdump: loaded Not tainted 7.0.0-rc2+ #84 PREEMPT
[ 441.691327] pstate: 81400009 (Nzcv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO +DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[ 441.698277] pc : sas_find_dev_by_rphy+0x44/0x118
[ 441.702896] lr : sas_find_dev_by_rphy+0x3c/0x118
[ 441.707502] sp : ffff80009abbba40
[ 441.710805] x29: ffff80009abbba40 x28: ffff082819a40008 x27: ffff082810c37c08
[ 441.717930] x26: ffff082810c37c28 x25: ffff082819a40290 x24: ffff082810c37c00
[ 441.725054] x23: 0000000000000000 x22: 0000000000000001 x21: ffff082819a40000
[ 441.732179] x20: ffff082819a40290 x19: 0000000000000000 x18: 0000000000000020
[ 441.739304] x17: 0000000000000000 x16: ffffb5dad6bda690 x15: 00000000ffffffff
[ 441.746428] x14: ffff082814c3b26c x13: 00000000ffffffff x12: ffff082814c3b26a
[ 441.753553] x11: 00000000000000c0 x10: 000000000000003a x9 : ffffb5dad5ea94f4
[ 441.760678] x8 : 000000000000003a x7 : ffff80009abbbab0 x6 : 0000000000000030
[ 441.767802] x5 : 0000000000000000 x4 : 0000000000000000 x3 : 0000000000000000
[ 441.774926] x2 : ffff08280f35a300 x1 : ffffb5dad7127180 x0 : 0000000000000000
[ 441.782053] Call trace:
[ 441.784488] sas_find_dev_by_rphy+0x44/0x118 (P)
[ 441.789095] sas_target_alloc+0x24/0xb0
[ 441.792920] scsi_alloc_target+0x290/0x330
[ 441.797010] __scsi_scan_target+0x88/0x258
[ 441.801096] scsi_scan_channel+0x74/0xb8
[ 441.805008] scsi_scan_host_selected+0x170/0x188
[ 441.809615] sas_user_scan+0xfc/0x148
[ 441.813267] store_scan+0x10c/0x180
[ 441.816743] dev_attr_store+0x20/0x40
[ 441.820398] sysfs_kf_write+0x84/0xa8
[ 441.824054] kernfs_fop_write_iter+0x130/0x1c8
[ 441.828487] vfs_write+0x2c0/0x370
[ 441.831880] ksys_write+0x74/0x118
[ 441.835271] __arm64_sys_write+0x24/0x38
[ 441.839182] invoke_syscall+0x50/0x120
[ 441.842919] el0_svc_common.constprop.0+0xc8/0xf0
[ 441.847611] do_el0_svc+0x24/0x38
[ 441.850913] el0_svc+0x38/0x158
[ 441.854043] el0t_64_sync_handler+0xa0/0xe8
[ 441.858214] el0t_64_sync+0x1ac/0x1b0
[ 441.861865] Code: aa1303e0 97ff70a8 34ffff80 d10a4273 (f9445a75)
[ 441.867946] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
Therefore, set max_channel to 0.
Fixes: e21fe3a52692 ("scsi: hisi_sas: add initialisation for v3 pci-based controller")
Signed-off-by: Xingui Yang <yangxingui@huawei.com>
Signed-off-by: Yihang Li <liyihang9@huawei.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260305064039.4096775-1-liyihang9@huawei.com
Signed-off-by: Martin K. Petersen <martin.petersen@oracle.com>