Re: [PATCH] MIPS: pgalloc: fix memory leak caused by pgd_free()

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 4 Apr 2022, Andrew Powers-Holmes wrote:

> Fair enough :) apologies, didn't mean to sound combative or ungrateful.
> I know there's far more work to go around than people to do it,
> everyone's doing the best they can, and I have nothing but appreciation
> for all the work the kernel community does.

 No offence taken; I just wanted to make it absolutely clear what the 
situation currently is.

> It's just surprising that this *could* go unnoticed for over a year -
> though I suppose most of the MIPS64 systems out there are running on one
> or another old vendor SDK kernel so won't have been affected...

 That's subject to the probability theory and depending on what people's 
usage models are.

> Would the best way to get this merged into 5.10/15 (and maybe .16 just
> for good measure) be to email the stable team (since it's already in
> Linus' tree)? Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules seems to say
> yes, but I'd like to avoid stepping on anyone's toes given that it's not
> my patch.

 You seem the most severely affected so far, so why not act in your best 
interest?  I think option #2 applies here and seems quite straightforward 
to follow, referring commit 2bc5bab9a763 and using your use case as the 
justification.  It doesn't have to be the author to request a backport.

 NB I think it has to be backported to all the stable branches made since 
the original breakage; i.e. v5.9+ (I haven't kept track of what they are).

  Maciej