On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 01:22:49PM -0800, Rick Edgecombe wrote: > From: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@xxxxxxxxx> > > The Write=0,Dirty=1 PTE has been used to indicate copy-on-write pages. > However, newer x86 processors also regard a Write=0,Dirty=1 PTE as a > shadow stack page. In order to separate the two, the software-defined > _PAGE_DIRTY is changed to _PAGE_COW for the copy-on-write case, and > pte_*() are updated to do this. "In order to separate the two, change the software-defined ..." >From section "2) Describe your changes" in Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst: "Describe your changes in imperative mood, e.g. "make xyzzy do frotz" instead of "[This patch] makes xyzzy do frotz" or "[I] changed xyzzy to do frotz", as if you are giving orders to the codebase to change its behaviour." > +static inline pte_t __pte_mkdirty(pte_t pte, bool soft) > +{ > + pteval_t dirty = _PAGE_DIRTY; > + > + if (soft) > + dirty |= _PAGE_SOFT_DIRTY; > + > + return pte_set_flags(pte, dirty); > +} Dunno, do you even need that __pte_mkdirty() helper? AFAIU, pte_mkdirty() will always set _PAGE_SOFT_DIRTY too so whatever the __pte_mkdirty() thing needs to do, you can simply do it by foot in the two callsites. And this way you won't have the confusion: should I use pte_mkdirty() or __pte_mkdirty()? Ditto for the pmd variants. Otherwise, this is starting to make more sense now. Thx. -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette