CVE: CVE-2025-39879
Published: 2025-09-23
Description: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ceph: always call ceph_shift_unused_folios_left()

The function ceph_process_folio_batch() sets folio_batch entries to
NULL, which is an illegal state.  Before folio_batch_release() crashes
due to this API violation, the function ceph_shift_unused_folios_left()
is supposed to remove those NULLs from the array.

However, since commit ce80b76dd327 ("ceph: introduce
ceph_process_folio_batch() method"), this shifting doesn't happen
anymore because the "for" loop got moved to ceph_process_folio_batch(),
and now the `i` variable that remains in ceph_writepages_start()
doesn't get incremented anymore, making the shifting effectively
unreachable much of the time.

Later, commit 1551ec61dc55 ("ceph: introduce ceph_submit_write()
method") added more preconditions for doing the shift, replacing the
`i` check (with something that is still just as broken):

- if ceph_process_folio_batch() fails, shifting never happens

- if ceph_move_dirty_page_in_page_array() was never called (because
  ceph_process_folio_batch() has returned early for some of various
  reasons), shifting never happens

- if `processed_in_fbatch` is zero (because ceph_process_folio_batch()
  has returned early for some of the reasons mentioned above or
  because ceph_move_dirty_page_in_page_array() has failed), shifting
  never happens

Since those two commits, any problem in ceph_process_folio_batch()
could crash the kernel, e.g. this way:

 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: [PII_REDACTED]
 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode
 #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page
 PGD 0 P4D 0
 Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI
 CPU: 172 UID: 0 PID: 2342707 Comm: kworker/u778:8 Not tainted 6.15.10-cm4all1-es #714 NONE
 Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R7615/0G9DHV, BIOS 1.6.10 12/08/2023
 Workqueue: writeback wb_workfn (flush-ceph-1)
 RIP: 0010:folios_put_refs+0x85/0x140
 Code: 83 c5 01 39 e8 7e 76 48 63 c5 49 8b 5c c4 08 b8 01 00 00 00 4d 85 ed 74 05 41 8b 44 ad 00 48 8b 15 b0 >
 RSP: 0018:ffffb880af8db778 EFLAGS: 00010207
 RAX: [PII_REDACTED] RBX: [PII_REDACTED] RCX: [PII_REDACTED]
 RDX: ffffe377cc3b0000 RSI: [PII_REDACTED] RDI: ffffb880af8db8c0
 RBP: [PII_REDACTED] R08:[PII_REDACTED]00007d R09:[PII_REDACTED]02b86f
 R10: [PII_REDACTED] R11:[PII_REDACTED]0000ac R12: ffffb880af8db8c0
 R13: [PII_REDACTED] R14: [PII_REDACTED] R15: ffff9bd262c97000
 FS:  [PII_REDACTED](0000) GS:ffff9c8efc303000(0000) knlGS:[PII_REDACTED]
 CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: [PII_REDACTED]
 CR2: [PII_REDACTED] CR3: [PII_REDACTED] CR4:[PII_REDACTED]770ef0
 PKRU: 55555554
 Call Trace:
  <TASK>
  ceph_writepages_start+0xeb9/0x1410

The crash can be reproduced easily by changing the
ceph_check_page_before_write() return value to `-E2BIG`.

(Interestingly, the crash happens only if `huge_zero_folio` has
already been allocated; without `huge_zero_folio`,
is_huge_zero_folio(NULL) returns true and folios_put_refs() skips NULL
entries instead of dereferencing them.  That makes reproducing the bug
somewhat unreliable.  See
https://lore.kernel.org/[PII_REDACTED]1626.218675-1-max.kellermann@ionos.com
for a discussion of this detail.)

My suggestion is to move the ceph_shift_unused_folios_left() to right
after ceph_process_folio_batch() to ensure it always gets called to
fix up the illegal folio_batch state.
CVSS Score: 5.5 (MEDIUM)
CWE: CWE-476, CWE-476
References: https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/289b6615cf553d98509a9b273195d9936da1cfb2; https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cce7c15faaac79b532a07ed6ab8332280ad83762