2.6.27-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let us know. ------------------ From: Andi Kleen commit f313e12308f7c5ea645f18e759d104d088b18615 upstream. Ajith Kumar noticed: I was going through the vmalloc fault handling for x86_64 and am unclear about the following lines in the vmalloc_fault() function. pgd = pgd_offset(current->mm ?: &init_mm, address); pgd_ref = pgd_offset_k(address); Here the intention is to get the pgd corresponding to the current process and sync it up with the pgd in init_mm(obtained from pgd_offset_k). However, for kernel threads current->mm is NULL and hence pgd = pgd_offset(init_mm, address) = pgd_ref which means the fault handler returns without setting the pgd entry in the MM structure in the context of which the kernel thread has faulted. This could lead to never-ending faults and busy looping of kernel threads like pdflush. So, shouldn't the pgd = pgd_offset(current->mm ?: &init_mm, address); be pgd = pgd_offset(current->active_mm ?: &init_mm, address); We can use active_mm unconditionally because it should be always set. Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- arch/x86/mm/fault.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) --- a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c +++ b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c @@ -534,7 +534,7 @@ static int vmalloc_fault(unsigned long a happen within a race in page table update. In the later case just flush. */ - pgd = pgd_offset(current->mm ?: &init_mm, address); + pgd = pgd_offset(current->active_mm, address); pgd_ref = pgd_offset_k(address); if (pgd_none(*pgd_ref)) return -1; -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/