Linux 6.12: PG_error flag was removed
torvalds/linux@09022bc196d2 removes the flag, and the corresponding
SetPageError() and ClearPageError() macros, with no replacement offered.
Going back through the upstream history, use of this flag has been
gradually removed over the last year as part of the long tail of
converting everything to folios. Interesting tidbit comments from
torvalds/linux@29e9412b250e and torvalds/linux@420e05d0de18 suggest that
this flag has not been used meaningfully since page writeback failures
started being recorded in errseq_t instead (the whole "fsyncgate" thing,
~2017, around torvalds/linux@8ed1e46aaf1b).
Given that, it's possible that since perhaps Linux 4.13 we haven't been
getting anything by setting the flag. I don't know if that's true and/or
if there's something we should be doing instead, but my gut feel is that
its probably fine we only use the page cache as a proxy to allow mmap()
to work, rather than backing IO with it.
As such, I'm expecting that removing this will do no harm, but I'm
leaving it in for older kernels to maintain status quo, and if there is
an overall better way, that is left for a future change.
Sponsored-by: https://despairlabs.com/sponsor/
Reviewed-by: Brian Behlendorf <behlendorf1@llnl.gov>
Signed-off-by: Rob Norris <robn@despairlabs.com>
Closes #16582