Re: [PATCH] mm/fadvise: validate offset in generic_fadvise

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Tue, 6 Jan 2026 20:46:14 +0100 "David Hildenbrand (Red Hat)" <david@kernel.org> wrote:

> > Since I think nobody intentionally passes negative values and since
> > that makes no sense semantically speaking, I think we can consider it
> 
> Well, then why document negative length? ;) We should be as clear as 
> possible in the documentation.
> 
> If POSIX would have been clearer we wouldn't have this discussion :)
> 
> > unnecessary to update the man page right now and only think about it
> > in the future if a negative offset gains a new meaning, for example.
> > 
> > Wdyt?
> 
> Likely we should really update the man page to reflect reality. 
> "Starting with Linux v7.0, posix_fadvise() will fail with ...".
> 
> Given that FreeBSD rejects negative offsets I guess we are good.

I'm still not sure what to do with this.

Kevin, would you have time to update the changelog with the additional
things we've discussed: linux manpages, POSIX, freebsd etc?  Then
please resend, cc'ing linux-fsdevel, Jan Kara and anyone else we can
think of ;)

Thanks.