The patch titled Subject: mm/ksm: fix flag-dropping behavior in ksm_madvise has been added to the -mm mm-hotfixes-unstable branch. Its filename is mm-ksm-fix-flag-dropping-behavior-in-ksm_madvise.patch

This patch will shortly appear at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/25-new.git/tree/patches...

This patch will later appear in the mm-hotfixes-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

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------------------------------------------------------ From: Jakub Acs acsjakub@amazon.de Subject: mm/ksm: fix flag-dropping behavior in ksm_madvise Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2025 09:03:52 +0000

syzkaller discovered the following crash: (kernel BUG)

[ 44.607039] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 44.607422] kernel BUG at mm/userfaultfd.c:2067! [ 44.608148] Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC KASAN NOPTI [ 44.608814] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 2475 Comm: reproducer Not tainted 6.16.0-rc6 #1 PREEMPT(none) [ 44.609635] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 [ 44.610695] RIP: 0010:userfaultfd_release_all+0x3a8/0x460

<snip other registers, drop unreliable trace>

[ 44.617726] Call Trace: [ 44.617926] <TASK> [ 44.619284] userfaultfd_release+0xef/0x1b0 [ 44.620976] __fput+0x3f9/0xb60 [ 44.621240] fput_close_sync+0x110/0x210 [ 44.622222] __x64_sys_close+0x8f/0x120 [ 44.622530] do_syscall_64+0x5b/0x2f0 [ 44.622840] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e [ 44.623244] RIP: 0033:0x7f365bb3f227

Kernel panics because it detects UFFD inconsistency during userfaultfd_release_all(). Specifically, a VMA which has a valid pointer to vma->vm_userfaultfd_ctx, but no UFFD flags in vma->vm_flags.

The inconsistency is caused in ksm_madvise(): when user calls madvise() with MADV_UNMEARGEABLE on a VMA that is registered for UFFD in MINOR mode, it accidentally clears all flags stored in the upper 32 bits of vma->vm_flags.

Assuming x86_64 kernel build, unsigned long is 64-bit and unsigned int and int are 32-bit wide. This setup causes the following mishap during the &= ~VM_MERGEABLE assignment.

VM_MERGEABLE is a 32-bit constant of type unsigned int, 0x8000'0000. After ~ is applied, it becomes 0x7fff'ffff unsigned int, which is then promoted to unsigned long before the & operation. This promotion fills upper 32 bits with leading 0s, as we're doing unsigned conversion (and even for a signed conversion, this wouldn't help as the leading bit is 0). & operation thus ends up AND-ing vm_flags with 0x0000'0000'7fff'ffff instead of intended 0xffff'ffff'7fff'ffff and hence accidentally clears the upper 32-bits of its value.

Fix it by changing `VM_MERGEABLE` constant to unsigned long, using the BIT() macro.

Note: other VM_* flags are not affected: This only happens to the VM_MERGEABLE flag, as the other VM_* flags are all constants of type int and after ~ operation, they end up with leading 1 and are thus converted to unsigned long with leading 1s.

Note 2: After commit 31defc3b01d9 ("userfaultfd: remove (VM_)BUG_ON()s"), this is no longer a kernel BUG, but a WARNING at the same place:

[ 45.595973] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 2474 at mm/userfaultfd.c:2067

but the root-cause (flag-drop) remains the same.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251001090353.57523-2-acsjakub@amazon.de Fixes: 7677f7fd8be7 ("userfaultfd: add minor fault registration mode") Signed-off-by: Jakub Acs acsjakub@amazon.de Acked-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Acked-by: SeongJae Park sj@kernel.org Cc: Xu Xin xu.xin16@zte.com.cn Cc: Chengming Zhou chengming.zhou@linux.dev Cc: Peter Xu peterx@redhat.com Cc: Axel Rasmussen axelrasmussen@google.com Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org ---

include/linux/mm.h | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- a/include/linux/mm.h~mm-ksm-fix-flag-dropping-behavior-in-ksm_madvise +++ a/include/linux/mm.h @@ -296,7 +296,7 @@ extern unsigned int kobjsize(const void #define VM_MIXEDMAP 0x10000000 /* Can contain "struct page" and pure PFN pages */ #define VM_HUGEPAGE 0x20000000 /* MADV_HUGEPAGE marked this vma */ #define VM_NOHUGEPAGE 0x40000000 /* MADV_NOHUGEPAGE marked this vma */ -#define VM_MERGEABLE 0x80000000 /* KSM may merge identical pages */ +#define VM_MERGEABLE BIT(31) /* KSM may merge identical pages */

#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_USES_HIGH_VMA_FLAGS #define VM_HIGH_ARCH_BIT_0 32 /* bit only usable on 64-bit architectures */ _

Patches currently in -mm which might be from acsjakub@amazon.de are

mm-ksm-fix-flag-dropping-behavior-in-ksm_madvise.patch