Re: [PATCH v4 2/4] PCI/sysfs: Fix null pointer dereference during hotplug

Bjorn Helgaas
2026-02-26T17:14:05Z

On Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 04:17:19PM +0800, Ziming Du wrote:
> During the concurrent process of creating and rescanning in VF, the
> resource files for the same pci_dev may be created twice.

Where are the two resource file creations? This will help review the
patch.

> The second
> creation attempt fails, resulting the res_attr in pci_dev to kfree(),
> but the pointer is not set to NULL. This will subsequently lead to
> dereferencing a null pointer when removing the device.
>
> When we perform the following operation:
> echo $sriov_totalvfs > /sys/class/net/"$pfname"/device/sriov_numvfs &

I think it would be more informative to include an actual sample here.
We can easily substitute the device names and numbers, given a
concrete example. It's a little bit harder to intuit what $pfname and
$sriov_totalvfs should be. E.g.,

$ cat /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:02:00.0/sriov_totalvfs
128
$ echo 128 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:02:00.0/sriov_numvfs &

Unless it's important to use /sys/class/net/..., use
/sys/bus/pci/devices/... both places to make it simpler.

> sleep 0.5
> echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

These look like shell commands ...

> pci_remove "$pfname"

but what is "pci_remove"? I guess it must be an echo into
/sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove; expanding it here would be better.

> system will crash as follows:
>
> Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at virtual address 0000000000000000
> Call trace:
> __pi_strlen+0x14/0x150
> kernfs_find_ns+0x54/0x120
> kernfs_remove_by_name_ns+0x58/0xf0
> sysfs_remove_bin_file+0x24/0x38
> pci_remove_resource_files+0x44/0x90
> pci_remove_sysfs_dev_files+0x28/0x40
> pci_stop_bus_device+0xb8/0x118
> pci_stop_and_remove_bus_device+0x20/0x40
> pci_iov_remove_virtfn+0xb8/0x138
> sriov_disable+0xbc/0x190
> pci_disable_sriov+0x30/0x48
> hinic_pci_sriov_disable+0x54/0x138 [hinic]
> hinic_remove+0x140/0x290 [hinic]
> pci_device_remove+0x4c/0xf8
> device_remove+0x54/0x90
> device_release_driver_internal+0x1d4/0x238
> device_release_driver+0x20/0x38
> pci_stop_bus_device+0xa8/0x118
> pci_stop_and_remove_bus_device_locked+0x28/0x50
> remove_store+0x128/0x208
>
> Fix this by set the pointer to NULL after releasing 'res_attr' immediately.

This *sounds* like it would still be racy unless there's a lock around
this. If there is a lock, please mention what it is and where it's
held.

> Fixes: 1da177e4c3f4 ("Linux-2.6.12-rc2")
> Signed-off-by: Ziming Du <duziming2@huawei.com>
> ---
> drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c | 2 ++
> 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c b/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> index 18e5d4603b472..fbcbf39232732 100644
> --- a/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> +++ b/drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c
> @@ -1227,12 +1227,14 @@ static void pci_remove_resource_files(struct pci_dev *pdev)
> if (res_attr) {
> sysfs_remove_bin_file(&pdev->dev.kobj, res_attr);
> kfree(res_attr);
> + pdev->res_attr[i] = NULL;
> }
>
> res_attr = pdev->res_attr_wc[i];
> if (res_attr) {
> sysfs_remove_bin_file(&pdev->dev.kobj, res_attr);
> kfree(res_attr);
> + pdev->res_attr_wc[i] = NULL;
> }
> }
> }
> --
> 2.43.0
>