Re: [RFC PATCH 1/2] mm, vmstat: hide /proc/pagetypeinfo from normal users

From: Mel Gorman
Date: Wed Oct 23 2019 - 09:13:06 EST


On Wed, Oct 23, 2019 at 12:27:36PM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>
>
> /proc/pagetypeinfo is a debugging tool to examine internal page
> allocator state wrt to fragmentation. It is not very useful for
> any other use so normal users really do not need to read this file.
>
> Waiman Long has noticed that reading this file can have negative side
> effects because zone->lock is necessary for gathering data and that
> a) interferes with the page allocator and its users and b) can lead to
> hard lockups on large machines which have very long free_list.
>
> Reduce both issues by simply not exporting the file to regular users.
>
> Reported-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: stable
> Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxx>

--
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs