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-rw-r--r--Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt18
-rw-r--r--Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt30
2 files changed, 26 insertions, 22 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt
index d4a372e..88152f2 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/fs.txt
@@ -205,16 +205,22 @@ This value can be used to query and set the core dump mode for setuid
or otherwise protected/tainted binaries. The modes are
0 - (default) - traditional behaviour. Any process which has changed
- privilege levels or is execute only will not be dumped
+ privilege levels or is execute only will not be dumped.
1 - (debug) - all processes dump core when possible. The core dump is
owned by the current user and no security is applied. This is
intended for system debugging situations only. Ptrace is unchecked.
+ This is insecure as it allows regular users to examine the memory
+ contents of privileged processes.
2 - (suidsafe) - any binary which normally would not be dumped is dumped
- readable by root only. This allows the end user to remove
- such a dump but not access it directly. For security reasons
- core dumps in this mode will not overwrite one another or
- other files. This mode is appropriate when administrators are
- attempting to debug problems in a normal environment.
+ anyway, but only if the "core_pattern" kernel sysctl is set to
+ either a pipe handler or a fully qualified path. (For more details
+ on this limitation, see CVE-2006-2451.) This mode is appropriate
+ when administrators are attempting to debug problems in a normal
+ environment, and either have a core dump pipe handler that knows
+ to treat privileged core dumps with care, or specific directory
+ defined for catching core dumps. If a core dump happens without
+ a pipe handler or fully qualifid path, a message will be emitted
+ to syslog warning about the lack of a correct setting.
==============================================================
diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
index 96f0ee8..dcc2a94 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt
@@ -42,7 +42,6 @@ Currently, these files are in /proc/sys/vm:
- mmap_min_addr
- nr_hugepages
- nr_overcommit_hugepages
-- nr_pdflush_threads
- nr_trim_pages (only if CONFIG_MMU=n)
- numa_zonelist_order
- oom_dump_tasks
@@ -426,16 +425,6 @@ See Documentation/vm/hugetlbpage.txt
==============================================================
-nr_pdflush_threads
-
-The current number of pdflush threads. This value is read-only.
-The value changes according to the number of dirty pages in the system.
-
-When necessary, additional pdflush threads are created, one per second, up to
-nr_pdflush_threads_max.
-
-==============================================================
-
nr_trim_pages
This is available only on NOMMU kernels.
@@ -502,9 +491,10 @@ oom_dump_tasks
Enables a system-wide task dump (excluding kernel threads) to be
produced when the kernel performs an OOM-killing and includes such
-information as pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, cpu, oom_adj score, and
-name. This is helpful to determine why the OOM killer was invoked
-and to identify the rogue task that caused it.
+information as pid, uid, tgid, vm size, rss, nr_ptes, swapents,
+oom_score_adj score, and name. This is helpful to determine why the
+OOM killer was invoked, to identify the rogue task that caused it,
+and to determine why the OOM killer chose the task it did to kill.
If this is set to zero, this information is suppressed. On very
large systems with thousands of tasks it may not be feasible to dump
@@ -574,16 +564,24 @@ of physical RAM. See above.
page-cluster
-page-cluster controls the number of pages which are written to swap in
-a single attempt. The swap I/O size.
+page-cluster controls the number of pages up to which consecutive pages
+are read in from swap in a single attempt. This is the swap counterpart
+to page cache readahead.
+The mentioned consecutivity is not in terms of virtual/physical addresses,
+but consecutive on swap space - that means they were swapped out together.
It is a logarithmic value - setting it to zero means "1 page", setting
it to 1 means "2 pages", setting it to 2 means "4 pages", etc.
+Zero disables swap readahead completely.
The default value is three (eight pages at a time). There may be some
small benefits in tuning this to a different value if your workload is
swap-intensive.
+Lower values mean lower latencies for initial faults, but at the same time
+extra faults and I/O delays for following faults if they would have been part of
+that consecutive pages readahead would have brought in.
+
=============================================================
panic_on_oom
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