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Pasha Tatashin 9e2fd062fa liveupdate: luo_core: Live Update Orchestrator
Patch series "Live Update Orchestrator", v8.

This series introduces the Live Update Orchestrator, a kernel subsystem
designed to facilitate live kernel updates using a kexec-based reboot. 
This capability is critical for cloud environments, allowing hypervisors
to be updated with minimal downtime for running virtual machines.  LUO
achieves this by preserving the state of selected resources, such as
memory, devices and their dependencies, across the kernel transition.

As a key feature, this series includes support for preserving memfd file
descriptors, which allows critical in-memory data, such as guest RAM or
any other large memory region, to be maintained in RAM across the kexec
reboot.

The other series that use LUO, are VFIO [1], IOMMU [2], and PCI [3]
preservations.

Github repo of this series [4].

The core of LUO is a framework for managing the lifecycle of preserved
resources through a userspace-driven interface. Key features include:

- Session Management
  Userspace agent (i.e. luod [5]) creates named sessions, each
  represented by a file descriptor (via centralized agent that controls
  /dev/liveupdate). The lifecycle of all preserved resources within a
  session is tied to this FD, ensuring automatic kernel cleanup if the
  controlling userspace agent crashes or exits unexpectedly.

- File Preservation
  A handler-based framework allows specific file types (demonstrated
  here with memfd) to be preserved. Handlers manage the serialization,
  restoration, and lifecycle of their specific file types.

- File-Lifecycle-Bound State
  A new mechanism for managing shared global state whose lifecycle is
  tied to the preservation of one or more files. This is crucial for
  subsystems like IOMMU or HugeTLB, where multiple file descriptors may
  depend on a single, shared underlying resource that must be preserved
  only once.

- KHO Integration
  LUO drives the Kexec Handover framework programmatically to pass its
  serialized metadata to the next kernel. The LUO state is finalized and
  added to the kexec image just before the reboot is triggered. In the
  future this step will also be removed once stateless KHO is
  merged [6].

- Userspace Interface
  Control is provided via ioctl commands on /dev/liveupdate for creating
  and retrieving sessions, as well as on session file descriptors for
  managing individual files.

- Testing
  The series includes a set of selftests, including userspace API
  validation, kexec-based lifecycle tests for various session and file
  scenarios, and a new in-kernel test module to validate the FLB logic.




Introduce LUO, a mechanism intended to facilitate kernel updates while
keeping designated devices operational across the transition (e.g., via
kexec).  The primary use case is updating hypervisors with minimal
disruption to running virtual machines.  For userspace side of hypervisor
update we have copyless migration.  LUO is for updating the kernel.

This initial patch lays the groundwork for the LUO subsystem.

Further functionality, including the implementation of state transition
logic, integration with KHO, and hooks for subsystems and file
descriptors, will be added in subsequent patches.

Create a character device at /dev/liveupdate.

A new uAPI header, <uapi/linux/liveupdate.h>, will define the necessary
structures.  The magic number for IOCTL is registered in
Documentation/userspace-api/ioctl/ioctl-number.rst.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251125165850.3389713-1-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251125165850.3389713-2-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251018000713.677779-1-vipinsh@google.com/ [1]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-iommu/20250928190624.3735830-1-skhawaja@google.com [2]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20250916-luo-pci-v2-0-c494053c3c08@kernel.org [3]
Link: https://github.com/googleprodkernel/linux-liveupdate/tree/luo/v8 [4]
Link: https://tinyurl.com/luoddesign [5]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251020100306.2709352-1-jasonmiu@google.com [6]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251115233409.768044-1-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com [7]
Link: https://github.com/soleen/linux/blob/luo/v8b03/diff.v7.v8 [8]
Signed-off-by: Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>
Reviewed-by: Pratyush Yadav <pratyush@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
Tested-by: David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com>
Cc: Aleksander Lobakin <aleksander.lobakin@intel.com>
Cc: Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com>
Cc: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com>
Cc: Andriy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
Cc: anish kumar <yesanishhere@gmail.com>
Cc: Anna Schumaker <anna.schumaker@oracle.com>
Cc: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@linaro.org>
Cc: Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@google.com>
Cc: Borislav Betkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Chanwoo Choi <cw00.choi@samsung.com>
Cc: Chen Ridong <chenridong@huawei.com>
Cc: Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Daniel Wagner <wagi@kernel.org>
Cc: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: David Jeffery <djeffery@redhat.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Guixin Liu <kanie@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Joanthan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com>
Cc: Joel Granados <joel.granados@kernel.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>
Cc: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Cc: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@nvidia.com>
Cc: Lukas Wunner <lukas@wunner.de>
Cc: Marc Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Cc: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Cc: Matthew Maurer <mmaurer@google.com>
Cc: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Cc: Myugnjoo Ham <myungjoo.ham@samsung.com>
Cc: Parav Pandit <parav@nvidia.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@nvidia.com>
Cc: Samiullah Khawaja <skhawaja@google.com>
Cc: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Stuart Hayes <stuart.w.hayes@gmail.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleinxer <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Thomas Weißschuh <linux@weissschuh.net>
Cc: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Cc: William Tu <witu@nvidia.com>
Cc: Yoann Congal <yoann.congal@smile.fr>
Cc: Zijun Hu <quic_zijuhu@quicinc.com>
Cc: Pratyush Yadav <ptyadav@amazon.de>
Cc: Zhu Yanjun <yanjun.zhu@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
2025-11-27 14:24:37 -08:00
arch Merge branch 'mm-hotfixes-stable' into mm-nonmm-stable in order to be able 2025-11-27 14:17:02 -08:00
block block-6.18-20251031 2025-10-31 12:57:19 -07:00
certs sign-file,extract-cert: use pkcs11 provider for OPENSSL MAJOR >= 3 2024-09-20 19:52:48 +03:00
crypto This push contains the following changes: 2025-10-10 08:56:16 -07:00
Documentation liveupdate: luo_core: Live Update Orchestrator 2025-11-27 14:24:37 -08:00
drivers lib/base64: add support for multiple variants 2025-11-20 14:03:43 -08:00
fs Merge branch 'mm-hotfixes-stable' into mm-nonmm-stable in order to be able 2025-11-27 14:17:02 -08:00
include liveupdate: luo_core: Live Update Orchestrator 2025-11-27 14:24:37 -08:00
init liveupdate: kho: move to kernel/liveupdate 2025-11-27 14:24:33 -08:00
io_uring io_uring: fix regbuf vector size truncation 2025-11-07 17:17:13 -07:00
ipc ipc: create_ipc_ns: drop mqueue mount on sysctl setup failure 2025-11-12 10:00:15 -08:00
kernel liveupdate: luo_core: Live Update Orchestrator 2025-11-27 14:24:37 -08:00
lib test_kho: unpreserve memory in case of error 2025-11-27 14:24:32 -08:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Replace the obsolete address of the FSF in the GFDL-1.2 2025-07-24 11:15:39 +02:00
mm memblock: unpreserve memory in case of error 2025-11-27 14:24:32 -08:00
net Including fixes from bluetooth and wireless. 2025-11-06 08:52:30 -08:00
rust rbtree: inline rb_last() 2025-11-27 14:24:30 -08:00
samples selftests: complete kselftest include centralization 2025-11-27 14:24:31 -08:00
scripts Merge branch 'mm-hotfixes-stable' into mm-nonmm-stable in order to be able 2025-11-27 14:17:02 -08:00
security integrity-v6.18 2025-10-05 10:48:33 -07:00
sound ASoC: Fixes for v6.18 2025-10-30 13:08:08 +01:00
tools kho: make debugfs interface optional 2025-11-27 14:24:31 -08:00
usr gen_init_cpio: Ignore fsync() returning EINVAL on pipes 2025-10-07 09:53:05 -07:00
virt KVM x86 fixes for 6.18: 2025-10-18 10:25:43 +02:00
.clang-format memblock: drop for_each_free_mem_pfn_range_in_zone_from() 2025-09-14 08:49:03 +03:00
.clippy.toml rust: clean Rust 1.88.0's warning about clippy::disallowed_macros configuration 2025-05-07 00:11:47 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.editorconfig .editorconfig: remove trim_trailing_whitespace option 2024-06-13 16:47:52 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore MAINTAINERS: remove Alyssa Rosenzweig 2025-09-18 21:17:31 +02:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore compile_commands.json globally 2025-08-12 15:53:55 -07:00
.mailmap Merge branch 'mm-hotfixes-stable' into mm-nonmm-stable in order to be able 2025-11-27 14:17:02 -08:00
.pylintrc tools: docs: parse-headers.py: move it from sphinx dir 2025-08-29 15:54:42 -06:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS CREDITS: update Martin's information 2025-11-12 10:00:14 -08:00
Kbuild sched: Make migrate_{en,dis}able() inline 2025-09-25 09:57:16 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS MAINTAINERS: update KHO maintainers 2025-11-27 14:24:33 -08:00
Makefile Linux 6.18-rc5 2025-11-09 15:10:19 -08:00
README README: Fix spelling 2024-03-18 03:36:32 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.