Re: [PATCH mm-unstable v1 20/20] mm: rename FOLL_FORCE to FOLL_PTRACE

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2022 at 2:58 PM Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Oh, er, why does get_arg_page() even need FOLL_FORCE? This is writing the
> new stack contents to the nascent brpm->vma, which was newly allocated
> with VM_STACK_FLAGS, which an arch can override, but they all appear to include
> VM_WRITE | VM_MAYWRITE.

Yeah, it does seem entirely superfluous.

It's been there since the very beginning (although in that original
commit b6a2fea39318 it was there as a '1' to the 'force' argument to
get_user_pages()).

I *think* it can be just removed. But as long as it exists, it should
most definitely not be renamed to FOLL_PTRACE.

There's a slight worry that it currently hides some other setup issue
that makes it matter, since it's been that way so long, but I can't
see what it is.

             Linus