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Linus Torvalds e1f2750edc x86: remove 'zerorest' argument from __copy_user_nocache()
Every caller passes in zero, meaning they don't want any partial copy to
zero the remainder of the destination buffer.

Which is just as well, because the implementation of that function
didn't actually even look at that argument, and wasn't even aware it
existed, although some misleading comments did mention it still.

The 'zerorest' thing is a historical artifact of how "copy_from_user()"
worked, in that it would zero the rest of the kernel buffer that it
copied into.

That zeroing still exists, but it's long since been moved to generic
code, and the raw architecture-specific code doesn't do it.  See
_copy_from_user() in lib/usercopy.c for this all.

However, while __copy_user_nocache() shares some history and superficial
other similarities with copy_from_user(), it is in many ways also very
different.

In particular, while the code makes it *look* similar to the generic
user copy functions that can copy both to and from user space, and take
faults on both reads and writes as a result, __copy_user_nocache() does
no such thing at all.

__copy_user_nocache() always copies to kernel space, and will never take
a page fault on the destination.  What *can* happen, though, is that the
non-temporal stores take a machine check because one of the use cases is
for writing to stable memory, and any memory errors would then take
synchronous faults.

So __copy_user_nocache() does look a lot like copy_from_user(), but has
faulting behavior that is more akin to our old copy_in_user() (which no
longer exists, but copied from user space to user space and could fault
on both source and destination).

And it very much does not have the "zero the end of the destination
buffer", since a problem with the destination buffer is very possibly
the very source of the partial copy.

So this whole thing was just a confusing historical artifact from having
shared some code with a completely different function with completely
different use cases.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2023-04-19 19:09:52 -07:00
Documentation Kbuild fixes for v6.3 (3rd) 2023-04-16 09:46:32 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add the copyleft-next-0.3.1 license 2022-11-08 15:44:01 +01:00
arch x86: remove 'zerorest' argument from __copy_user_nocache() 2023-04-19 19:09:52 -07:00
block block: don't set GD_NEED_PART_SCAN if scan partition failed 2023-04-06 20:41:53 -06:00
certs Kbuild updates for v6.3 2023-02-26 11:53:25 -08:00
crypto asymmetric_keys: log on fatal failures in PE/pkcs7 2023-03-21 16:23:56 +00:00
drivers x86: remove 'zerorest' argument from __copy_user_nocache() 2023-04-19 19:09:52 -07:00
fs smb311 server preauth integrity negotiate context parsing fix 2023-04-16 09:39:55 -07:00
include Including fixes from bpf, and bluetooth. 2023-04-13 15:33:04 -07:00
init init/initramfs: Fix argument forwarding to panic() in panic_show_mem() 2023-04-16 17:37:01 +09:00
io_uring io_uring-6.3-2023-04-14 2023-04-15 10:29:53 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.namespace' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2023-02-24 19:20:07 -08:00
kernel - Do not pull tasks to the local scheduling group if its average load is 2023-04-16 10:33:43 -07:00
lib maple_tree: fix a potential concurrency bug in RCU mode 2023-04-05 18:06:25 -07:00
mm mm/swap: fix swap_info_struct race between swapoff and get_swap_pages() 2023-04-05 18:06:24 -07:00
net Including fixes from bpf, and bluetooth. 2023-04-13 15:33:04 -07:00
rust Rust fixes for 6.3-rc1 2023-03-03 14:51:15 -08:00
samples LoongArch changes for v6.3 2023-03-01 09:27:00 -08:00
scripts kbuild: do not create intermediate *.tar for tar packages 2023-04-16 17:38:41 +09:00
security keys: Do not cache key in task struct if key is requested from kernel thread 2023-03-21 16:22:40 +00:00
sound ALSA: hda/hdmi: disable KAE for Intel DG2 2023-04-14 07:50:52 +02:00
tools x86: improve on the non-rep 'copy_user' function 2023-04-18 17:05:28 -07:00
usr initramfs: Check negative timestamp to prevent broken cpio archive 2023-04-16 17:37:01 +09:00
virt KVM: PPC: Make KVM_CAP_IRQFD_RESAMPLE platform dependent 2023-03-31 11:19:05 -04:00
.clang-format cpumask: re-introduce constant-sized cpumask optimizations 2023-03-05 14:30:34 -08:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore get_maintainer: add Alan to .get_maintainer.ignore 2022-08-20 15:17:44 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for *.dtso files 2023-02-26 15:28:23 +09:00
.gitignore kbuild: rpm-pkg: move source components to rpmbuild/SOURCES 2023-03-16 22:45:56 +09:00
.mailmap mailmap: add an entry for Leonard Crestez 2023-03-28 15:24:32 -07:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add `.rustfmt.toml` 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS There is no particular theme here - mainly quick hits all over the tree. 2023-02-23 17:55:40 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v6.1 2022-10-10 12:00:45 -07:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS ata changes for 6.3-rc7 2023-04-11 09:51:45 -07:00
Makefile Linux 6.3-rc7 2023-04-16 15:23:53 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

README

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.