Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 2620:137:e000::1:18 as permitted sender) client-ip=2620:137:e000::1:18;
Message-ID: <b273a9b7-82f7-5883-14d2-973dd005b005@omnom.net>
Date:   Mon, 4 Apr 2022 23:16:56 +1000
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/91.7.0
Subject: Re: [PATCH] MIPS: pgalloc: fix memory leak caused by pgd_free()
Content-Language: en-US
To:     "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@orcam.me.uk>
Cc:     yaliang.wang@windriver.com, rppt@kernel.org,
        Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@alpha.franken.de>,
        huangpei@loongson.cn, Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        kumba@gentoo.org, Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org>,
        anshuman.khandual@arm.com, penberg@kernel.org,
        linux-mips@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
References: <20220310113116.2068859-1-yaliang.wang@windriver.com>
 <alpine.DEB.2.21.2204021446370.47162@angie.orcam.me.uk>
 <9cc88b1c-8a8c-95ea-2cf7-31be3b771495@omnom.net>
 <alpine.DEB.2.21.2204031122020.47162@angie.orcam.me.uk>
From:   Andrew Powers-Holmes <aholmes@omnom.net>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.21.2204031122020.47162@angie.orcam.me.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

On 3/04/2022 8:37 pm, Maciej W. Rozycki wrote:
> AFAIK the MIPS port is only maintained on the best effort basis 
> nowadays I'm afraid.  I.e. it's enthusiasts investing their free time
> for the joy of fiddling with things.  So things are bound to break
> from time to time and remain unnoticed for a while.  We're doing our
> best, but our resources are limited.
> 
> Taking these limitations into account I think Thomas has been doing a
> tremendous job maintaining the MIPS port, but he hasn't been cc-ed on
> the submission of the original change and it's very easy to miss 
> stuff in the flood that has only been posted to a mailing list.
> 
> Maciej

Fair enough :) apologies, didn't mean to sound combative or ungrateful.
I know there's far more work to go around than people to do it,
everyone's doing the best they can, and I have nothing but appreciation
for all the work the kernel community does.

It's just surprising that this *could* go unnoticed for over a year -
though I suppose most of the MIPS64 systems out there are running on one
or another old vendor SDK kernel so won't have been affected...

Would the best way to get this merged into 5.10/15 (and maybe .16 just
for good measure) be to email the stable team (since it's already in
Linus' tree)? Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules seems to say
yes, but I'd like to avoid stepping on anyone's toes given that it's not
my patch.

- Andrew