mm/page_alloc: prevent pcp corruption with SMP=n
CVE: CVE-2026-23025
Component: kernel
CWE: CWE-368
Severity: Moderate
CVSS v3: 6.3/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
Release date: 2026-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

mm/page_alloc: prevent pcp corruption with SMP=n

The kernel test robot has reported:

 BUG: spinlock trylock failure on UP on CPU#0, kcompactd0/28
  lock: 0xffff888807e35ef0, .magic: dead4ead, .owner: kcompactd0/28, .owner_cpu: 0
 CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 28 Comm: kcompactd0 Not tainted 6.18.0-rc5-00127-ga06157804399 #1 PREEMPT  8cc09ef94dcec767faa911515ce9e609c45db470
 Call Trace:
  <IRQ>
  __dump_stack (lib/dump_stack.c:95)
  dump_stack_lvl (lib/dump_stack.c:123)
  dump_stack (lib/dump_stack.c:130)
  spin_dump (kernel/locking/spinlock_debug.c:71)
  do_raw_spin_trylock (kernel/locking/spinlock_debug.c:?)
  _raw_spin_trylock (include/linux/spinlock_api_smp.h:89 kernel/locking/spinlock.c:138)
  __free_frozen_pages (mm/page_alloc.c:2973)
  ___free_pages (mm/page_alloc.c:5295)
  __free_pages (mm/page_alloc.c:5334)
  tlb_remove_table_rcu (include/linux/mm.h:? include/linux/mm.h:3122 include/asm-generic/tlb.h:220 mm/mmu_gather.c:227 mm/mmu_gather.c:290)
  ? __cfi_tlb_remove_table_rcu (mm/mmu_gather.c:289)
  ? rcu_core (kernel/rcu/tree.c:?)
  rcu_core (include/linux/rcupdate.h:341 kernel/rcu/tree.c:2607 kernel/rcu/tree.c:2861)
  rcu_core_si (kernel/rcu/tree.c:2879)
  handle_softirqs (arch/x86/include/asm/jump_label.h:36 include/trace/events/irq.h:142 kernel/softirq.c:623)
  __irq_exit_rcu (arch/x86/include/asm/jump_label.h:36 kernel/softirq.c:725)
  irq_exit_rcu (kernel/softirq.c:741)
  sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt (arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c:1052)
  </IRQ>
  <TASK>
 RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore (arch/x86/include/asm/preempt.h:95 include/linux/spinlock_api_smp.h:152 kernel/locking/spinlock.c:194)
  free_pcppages_bulk (mm/page_alloc.c:1494)
  drain_pages_zone (include/linux/spinlock.h:391 mm/page_alloc.c:2632)
  __drain_all_pages (mm/page_alloc.c:2731)
  drain_all_pages (mm/page_alloc.c:2747)
  kcompactd (mm/compaction.c:3115)
  kthread (kernel/kthread.c:465)
  ? __cfi_kcompactd (mm/compaction.c:3166)
  ? __cfi_kthread (kernel/kthread.c:412)
  ret_from_fork (arch/x86/kernel/process.c:164)
  ? __cfi_kthread (kernel/kthread.c:412)
  ret_from_fork_asm (arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:255)
  </TASK>

Matthew has analyzed the report and identified that in drain_page_zone()
we are in a section protected by spin_lock(&pcp->lock) and then get an
interrupt that attempts spin_trylock() on the same lock.  The code is
designed to work this way without disabling IRQs and occasionally fail the
trylock with a fallback.  However, the SMP=n spinlock implementation
assumes spin_trylock() will always succeed, and thus it's normally a
no-op.  Here the enabled lock debugging catches the problem, but otherwise
it could cause a corruption of the pcp structure.

The problem has been introduced by commit 574907741599 ("mm/page_alloc:
leave IRQs enabled for per-cpu page allocations").  The pcp locking scheme
recognizes the need for disabling IRQs to prevent nesting spin_trylock()
sections on SMP=n, but the need to prevent the nesting in spin_lock() has
not been recognized.  Fix it by introducing local wrappers that change the
spin_lock() to spin_lock_iqsave() with SMP=n and use them in all places
that do spin_lock(&pcp->lock).

[vbabka@suse.cz: add pcp_ prefix to the spin_lock_irqsave wrappers, per Steven]


Remediation: