Re: Linux 6.12.99

On Mon, 10 Aug 2026 12:50:46 +0900
Dominique Martinet <[email protected]> wrote:

> Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote on Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 06:17:30PM +0200:
> > Lorenzo Stoakes (1):
> >       mm: refactor mm_access() to not return NULL  
> 
> FWIW if anyone else cares and looks for this, this backport was required
> due to a NULL deref in 6.12.98 (and likely .97 as well if commit
> 4bfe8c481846 ("proc: protect ptrace_may_access() with exec_update_lock
> (part 1)") is indeed the culprit, I didn't check):
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/2026072933-widow-grouped-f9e4@gregkh/T/#u
> 
> 
> Greg & Sasha,
> this is purely selfish and I'm grateful for all the work you two do
> backporting patches, but (for next times) it'd be great if the backport
> commit could also point at why it is backported after all this time
> (for example add a comment or even just the above link between the
> original sign-off and your's) -- it doesn't have to be much, but it took
> me a while to find (I was curious because this was an urgent release
> without -rc, with a single 2 year old patch branded as refactor not
> fixing anything obvious...)
> 
> Ultimately it doesn't change the fact that "all users must upgrade" as
> said in the announce, but I need to judge the urgency of the upgrade, so
> having a rationale is extremely useful.
> If backported commits fix something obvious then there's nothing to add,
> but in this case I believe I'm not the only one who'd puzzle over it (if
> someone is actually looking...)
> 
> Thanks!

Thanks for pointing that out, Dominique. I'll second the motion.