Linux: mm/hugetlb: fix boot panic with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM and HVO bootmem pages
What fixes it
- 2ddf429e25cf8415d9c308f07e64012026bd4d77LinuxCVE List
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Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/hugetlb: fix boot panic with CONFIG_DEBUG_VM and HVO bootmem pages
Patch series "mm: Refactor bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation", v4.
This series is split out from the earlier larger series "mm: Generalize HVO for HugeTLB and device DAX" [1]. It collects the first 19 patches of that series as a standalone set of fixes and preparatory cleanups around bootmem HugeTLB handling, sparse initialization ordering, and related vmemmap setup.
The first patches fix a few bugs found while reviewing the existing code, including incorrect bootmem HVO handling, wrong vmemmap registration arguments, a powerpc compound-vmemmap tracking bug, and too-late initialization of gigantic bootmem HugeTLB struct pages.
The rest of the series reorders early memory initialization so the relevant zone state is available before sparse and HugeTLB boot-time setup runs, then simplifies the remaining bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation path and removes code made obsolete by that rework.
At a high level:
- patches [1-4] fix boot-time and arch-specific bugs
- patches [5-12] reorder and simplify sparse/mm/hugetlb early init
- patches [13-19] refactor bootmem gigantic hugepage allocation and
remove obsolete helpers and state
This patch (of 19):
Commit 622026e87c40 ("mm/hugetlb: remove fake head pages") switched HVO to reuse per-zone shared tail pages from zone->vmemmap_tails[].
Those shared tail pages were initialized in hugetlb_vmemmap_init(), but bootmem HugeTLB folios are prepared earlier from gather_bootmem_prealloc(). With hugetlb_free_vmemmap=on, prep_and_add_bootmem_folios() can access pageblock flags on bootmem HugeTLB pages whose mirrored tail struct pages already point to the shared tail page. On CONFIG_DEBUG_VM kernels, get_pfnblock_bitmap_bitidx() then dereferences the still-uninitialized shared tail page and can panic during boot.
Initialize zone->vmemmap_tails[] from gather_bootmem_prealloc(), before bootmem HugeTLB folios are processed, and drop the later initialization from hugetlb_vmemmap_init().
This bug only affects CONFIG_DEBUG_VM kernels, where the relevant assertion is evaluated.
Text from CVE List
Affected versions 6
- Linuxaffected: 622026e87c4019e609010811757e31193cc23847 before 2ddf429e25cf8415d9c308f07e64012026bd4d77CVE List
- Linuxaffected: 622026e87c4019e609010811757e31193cc23847 before c0caeceb0c3899dc42844d3979093b27d1434108CVE List
- Linuxaffected: 7.1CVE List
- Linuxunaffected: all versions before 7.1CVE List
- Linuxunaffected: 7.2.4 through 7.2.*CVE List
- Linuxunaffected: 7.3CVE List