Kernel mm, filesystem, and scheduler fixes

Large memory management and filesystem fix series addressing races, error handling, and reclaim issues led kernel traffic, alongside a scheduler merge and a rejected late architecture pull. Library and shmem corrections plus a Rust protocol series rounded out the day.

Memory management race and hugepage fixes

David Hildenbrand posted a 46-patch series of various memory management fixes described as potentially urgent. The series drew high review volume centered on races and hugepage issues. Core mm stability work of this scale typically feeds stable kernels and affects a wide range of workloads.

Filesystem SB_RDONLY error path overhaul

Christian Brauner submitted version 2 of a 34-patch series that stops filesystems from setting SB_RDONLY after errors without holding s_umount. The changes resolve freeze races and remount issues in ext4, xfs, gfs2, ntfs, exfat and others. Proper locking on error transitions prevents stuck mounts and inconsistent remount behavior.

Inode reclaim DoS via I_METADATA_WRITEBACK

An RFC nine-patch series fixes inode reclaim where the I_METADATA_WRITEBACK flag pins inodes on ext2, ext4 without journal, fat, udf and minix. The condition enables a denial of service and the work is marked for stable backport. Reclaim reliability under metadata writeback pressure matters for those filesystems.

Steal governor and preferred CPUs land in tip

Version 14 of the series introducing preferred CPUs and steal-driven vCPU backoff for the steal_governor has been merged into tip/sched/core. The changes improve scheduler handling of virtual CPUs under steal time. Virtualization and scheduling developers gain new backoff and preference controls.

Late sparc pull rejected over process

Linus Torvalds rejected a late sparc updates pull request for v7.4 and rebuked contributors for suggesting rebases that alter commit dates. The heated exchange reinforces merge window timing rules and opposition to history rewriting. Architecture maintainers face clear limits on post-window submissions.

Maple tree and rhashtable library fixes

A four-patch set fixes a maple_tree RCU null dereference and an rhashtable deadlock on GFP_ATOMIC vmalloc rehash. Discussion questioned a related change making kvmalloc non-blocking. These core data structure corrections affect many kernel subsystems that rely on them.

shmem F_SEAL_EXEC bypass and race fixes

Version 4 of a 15-patch mm/shmem series fixes an F_SEAL_EXEC bypass via ACLs plus multiple truncation and swap races affecting tmpfs and memfd. The issues carry security implications for sealed memory objects. Users of memfd and tmpfs sealing depend on the corrected paths.

Rust SPDM requester series

A version 4 series of 22 patches adds a Rust implementation of SPDM as a kernel requester. The work targets safer parsing of complex untrusted authentication data. Placing Rust in this path aims to reduce parsing risk for device authentication protocols.