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From: Nilay Shroff <nilay@linux.ibm.com>
To: linux-block@vger.kernel.org
Cc: hch@lst.de, ming.lei@redhat.com, hare@suse.de, axboe@kernel.dk,
	dlemoal@kernel.org, johannes.thumshirn@wdc.com, gjoyce@ibm.com
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] lib/sbitmap: fix kernel crash observed when sbitmap depth is zero
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2025 17:05:41 +0530	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20250720113553.913034-2-nilay@linux.ibm.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20250720113553.913034-1-nilay@linux.ibm.com>

We observed a kernel crash when the I/O scheduler allocates an sbitmap
for a hardware queue (hctx) that has no associated software queues (ctx),
and later attempts to free it. When no software queues are mapped to a
hardware queue, the sbitmap is initialized with a depth of zero. In such
cases, the sbitmap_init_node() function should set sb->alloc_hint to NULL.
However, if this is not done, sb->alloc_hint may contain garbage, and
calling sbitmap_free() will pass this invalid pointer to free_percpu(),
resulting in a kernel crash.

Example crash trace:
==================================================================
Kernel attempted to read user page (28) - exploit attempt? (uid: 0)
BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference on read at 0x00000028
Faulting instruction address: 0xc000000000708f88
Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1]
LE PAGE_SIZE=64K MMU=Radix  SMP NR_CPUS=2048 NUMA pSeries
[...]
CPU: 5 UID: 0 PID: 5491 Comm: mk_nullb_shared Kdump: loaded Tainted: G    B               6.16.0-rc5+ #294 VOLUNTARY
Tainted: [B]=BAD_PAGE
Hardware name: IBM,9043-MRX POWER10 (architected) 0x800200 0xf000006 of:IBM,FW1060.00 (NM1060_028) hv:phyp pSeries
[...]
NIP [c000000000708f88] free_percpu+0x144/0xba8
LR [c000000000708f84] free_percpu+0x140/0xba8
Call Trace:
    free_percpu+0x140/0xba8 (unreliable)
    kyber_exit_hctx+0x94/0x124
    blk_mq_exit_sched+0xe4/0x214
    elevator_exit+0xa8/0xf4
    elevator_switch+0x3b8/0x5d8
    elv_update_nr_hw_queues+0x14c/0x300
    blk_mq_update_nr_hw_queues+0x5cc/0x670
    nullb_update_nr_hw_queues+0x118/0x1f8 [null_blk]
    nullb_device_submit_queues_store+0xac/0x170 [null_blk]
    configfs_write_iter+0x1dc/0x2d0
    vfs_write+0x5b0/0x77c
    ksys_write+0xa0/0x180
    system_call_exception+0x1b0/0x4f0
    system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec

If the sbitmap depth is zero, sb->alloc_hint memory is NOT allocated, but
the pointer is not explicitly set to NULL. Later, during sbitmap_free(),
the kernel attempts to free sb->alloc_hint, which is a per cpu pointer
variable, regardless of whether it was valid, leading to a crash.

This patch ensures that sb->alloc_hint is explicitly set to NULL in
sbitmap_init_node() when the requested depth is zero. This prevents
free_percpu() from freeing sb->alloc_hint and thus avoids the observed
crash.

Signed-off-by: Nilay Shroff <nilay@linux.ibm.com>
---
 lib/sbitmap.c | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/lib/sbitmap.c b/lib/sbitmap.c
index d3412984170c..aa8b6ca76169 100644
--- a/lib/sbitmap.c
+++ b/lib/sbitmap.c
@@ -119,6 +119,7 @@ int sbitmap_init_node(struct sbitmap *sb, unsigned int depth, int shift,
 
 	if (depth == 0) {
 		sb->map = NULL;
+		sb->alloc_hint = NULL;
 		return 0;
 	}
 
-- 
2.50.1


  reply	other threads:[~2025-07-20 11:36 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2025-07-20 11:35 [PATCH 0/2] fix sbitmap initialization and null_blk tagset setup Nilay Shroff
2025-07-20 11:35 ` Nilay Shroff [this message]
2025-07-21  7:15   ` [PATCH 1/2] lib/sbitmap: fix kernel crash observed when sbitmap depth is zero Hannes Reinecke
2025-07-21 13:02   ` Damien Le Moal
2025-07-20 11:35 ` [PATCH 2/2] null_blk: fix set->driver_data while setting up tagset Nilay Shroff
2025-07-21  7:16   ` Hannes Reinecke
2025-07-21 13:04   ` Damien Le Moal
2025-07-21 13:37     ` Nilay Shroff

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