Re: [PATCH v3 14/14] mm/page-flags: remove PG_private

On 9 Sep 2026, at 10:31, David Hildenbrand (Arm) wrote:

On 9/8/26 04:56, Zi Yan wrote:

quoted

folio->private != NULL indicates a folio carries private data, replacing
PG_private. All PG_private users are converted. Remove PG_private and
reserve the space as __PG_folio for future use.

__DEF_PAGEFLAG_NAME() is added to show __PG_folio.

Also update files in Documentation. hugetlbfs_reserv.rst is outdated and
left unchanged. It should be rewritten.

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-opus-4-8
Assisted-by: Codex:gpt-5
Signed-off-by: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
To: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To: Baoquan He <baoquan.he@linux.dev>
To: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
To: Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>
To: Pratyush Yadav <pratyush@kernel.org>
To: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
To: "Matthew Wilcox (Oracle)" <willy@infradead.org>
To: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@kernel.org>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
To: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Dave Young <ruirui.yang@linux.dev>
Cc: Shuah Khan <skhan@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes <ljs@kernel.org>
Cc: "Liam R. Howlett" <liam@infradead.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: kexec@lists.infradead.org
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Cc: linux-trace-kernel@vger.kernel.org
---
 Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/vmcoreinfo.rst |  2 +-
 Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst              |  6 +++---
 include/linux/page-flags.h                     | 19 ++-----------------
 include/trace/events/mmflags.h                 |  3 ++-
 kernel/vmcore_info.c                           |  1 -
 5 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 23 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/vmcoreinfo.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/vmcoreinfo.rst
index 7663c610fe901..5f1df6d080508 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/vmcoreinfo.rst
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kdump/vmcoreinfo.rst

@@ -325,7 +325,7 @@ NR_FREE_PAGES
 On linux-2.6.21 or later, the number of free pages is in
 vm_stat[NR_FREE_PAGES]. Used to get the number of free pages.

-PG_lru|PG_private|PG_swapcache|PG_swapbacked|PG_hwpoison|PG_head_mask
+PG_lru|PG_swapcache|PG_swapbacked|PG_hwpoison|PG_head_mask
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Page attributes. These flags are used to filter various unnecessary for

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst
index d3a93eec3945f..dec7816303c6a 100644
--- a/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/vfs.rst

@@ -649,8 +649,8 @@ Writeback.

 The first can be used independently to the others.  The VM can try to
 release clean pages in order to reuse them.  To do this it can call
-->release_folio on clean folios with the private
-flag set.  Clean pages without PagePrivate and with no external references
+->release_folio on clean folios with folio->private set. Clean pages
+without folio->private set and with no external references
 will be released without notice being given to the address_space.

This reads like it would belong into patch #13?

quoted

 To achieve this functionality, pages need to be placed on an LRU with

@@ -674,7 +674,7 @@ filemap_fdatawait_range, to wait for all writeback to complete.

 An address_space handler may attach extra information to a page,
 typically using the 'private' field in the 'struct page'.  If such
-information is attached, the PG_Private flag should be set.  This will
+information is attached, non-NULL 'private' field will

Same here?

Likely this could have been restructured to cause less head scratches. I'd
expect any documentation that refers to PG_private to get removed before finally
removing the bit.

Not the end of the world, just a bit confusing while reviewing.

Yeah, I will fold the document changes into the corresponding code change patches.

quoted

 cause various VM routines to make extra calls into the address_space
 handler to deal with that data.

diff --git a/include/linux/page-flags.h b/include/linux/page-flags.h
index ce7fccd90367b..7b7783c0a5216 100644
--- a/include/linux/page-flags.h
+++ b/include/linux/page-flags.h

@@ -44,10 +44,6 @@
  * Consequently, PG_reserved for a page mapped into user space can indicate
  * the zero page, the vDSO, MMIO pages or device memory.
  *
- * The PG_private bitflag is set on pagecache pages if they contain filesystem
- * specific data (which is normally at page->private). It can be used by
- * private allocations for its own usage.
- *
  * During initiation of disk I/O, PG_locked is set. This bit is set before I/O
  * and cleared when writeback _starts_ or when read _completes_. PG_writeback
  * is set before writeback starts and cleared when it finishes.

@@ -105,7 +101,7 @@ enum pageflags {
 	PG_owner_2,		/* Owner use. If pagecache, fs may use */
 	PG_arch_1,
 	PG_reserved,
-	PG_private,		/* If pagecache, has fs-private data */
+	__PG_folio,		/* Do not use: reserved for folio identification */

Do we really have to annotate it with __PG_folio ? I'd just keep it simple and
have the comment. That also avoids __DEF_PAGEFLAG_NAME just for this use case.

(sorry if this was discussed in previous review rounds)

No one complained about this yet. :)

I do this because I do not want to change PG_* values after PG_private after
PG_private is removed. And they will be changed back to their original values
when I add PG_folio. That PG_* value churn might be a headache for kdump?
If I add PG_folio the last page flag, it can be a one-time change though.

Best Regards,
Yan, Zi