Re: [PATCH v2] mm/ksm: keep soft-dirty and uffd-wp when merging a page

From: Lance Yang

Date: Sun Oct 18 2026 - 22:08:30 EST




On 2026/10/19 09:09, Samarth Narang wrote:
replace_page() maps the KSM page with a PTE built from scratch, so the
soft-dirty and uffd bits of the PTE it replaces are lost. Due to this, a
write before the merge no longer shows as soft-dirty, the next write to
a uffd-wp page raises no write-protect fault, and because the page is
mapped with the VMA's normal permissions, on a uffd-rwp VMA the next
access raises no RWP fault.

Copy the soft-dirty and uffd bits from the original PTE to the new PTE,
and restore PAGE_NONE for RWP VMAs, as try_to_map_unused_to_zeropage()
does.

Fixes: 0f8975ec4db2 ("mm: soft-dirty bits for user memory changes tracking")
Fixes: 63b2d4174c4a ("userfaultfd: wp: add the writeprotect API to userfaultfd ioctl")
Fixes: 2d427bb01639 ("mm/userfaultfd: add RWP fault delivery and expose UFFDIO_REGISTER_MODE_RWP")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tested-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@xxxxxxxxx>
Assisted-by: LLM
Signed-off-by: Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@xxxxxxxxx>
---

Notes:
v1: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261018122957.526467-1-samarth.colleges@xxxxxxxxx/
Changes since v1 (thanks, Lance):
- Fixes: point the uffd-wp and RWP tags at the commits that make the
registration modes reachable (63b2d4174c4a, 2d427bb01639).
- Shorten the comment; the uffd bit carries RWP state too.
- Add Lance's Tested-by.

Generally, no need to rush the next version out, please. Let it soak for a
few days so folks have time to review properly, instead of making everyone
start over every time. Just saying :)

Cheers, Lance