[PATCH] pagemap: Update BUDDY flag documentation

From: Richard Weinberger

Date: Sat Nov 22 2025 - 16:28:29 EST


Since v4.6 the BUDDY flag is set for _all_ pages in the block
and no longer just for the first one.
This change was introduced by:
commit 832fc1de01ae ("/proc/kpageflags: return KPF_BUDDY for "tail" buddy pages")

Strictly speaking, this was an ABI change, but as nobody has noticed
since 2016, let's just update the documentation.

Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
Cc: Konstantin Khlebnikov <koct9i@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Naoya Horiguchi <n-horiguchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Richard Weinberger <richard@xxxxxx>
---
Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst
index e60e9211fd9b2..c57e61b5d8aa8 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/mm/pagemap.rst
@@ -115,7 +115,8 @@ Short descriptions to the page flags
A free memory block managed by the buddy system allocator.
The buddy system organizes free memory in blocks of various orders.
An order N block has 2^N physically contiguous pages, with the BUDDY flag
- set for and _only_ for the first page.
+ set for all pages.
+ Before 4.6 only the first page of the block had the flag set.
15 - COMPOUND_HEAD
A compound page with order N consists of 2^N physically contiguous pages.
A compound page with order 2 takes the form of "HTTT", where H donates its
--
2.51.0