CVE-2025-21951

bus: mhi: host: pci_generic: Use pci_try_reset_function() to avoid deadlock

Medium · published April 1, 2025

CVSS v3.1
5.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
4.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

bus: mhi: host: pci_generic: Use pci_try_reset_function() to avoid deadlock

There are multiple places from where the recovery work gets scheduled

asynchronously. Also, there are multiple places where the caller waits

synchronously for the recovery to be completed. One such place is during

the PM shutdown() callback.

If the device is not alive during recovery_work, it will try to reset the

device using pci_reset_function(). This function internally will take the

device_lock() first before resetting the device. By this time, if the lock

has already been acquired, then recovery_work will get stalled while

waiting for the lock. And if the lock was already acquired by the caller

which waits for the recovery_work to be completed, it will lead to

deadlock.

This is what happened on the X1E80100 CRD device when the device died

before shutdown() callback. Driver core calls the driver's shutdown()

callback while holding the device_lock() leading to deadlock.

And this deadlock scenario can occur on other paths as well, like during

the PM suspend() callback, where the driver core would hold the

device_lock() before calling driver's suspend() callback. And if the

recovery_work was already started, it could lead to deadlock. This is also

observed on the X1E80100 CRD.

So to fix both issues, use pci_try_reset_function() in recovery_work. This

function first checks for the availability of the device_lock() before

trying to reset the device. If the lock is available, it will acquire it

and reset the device. Otherwise, it will return -EAGAIN. If that happens,

recovery_work will fail with the error message "Recovery failed" as not

much could be done.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00154 · 4.2th percentile
Published
2025-04-01T15:41Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 01 APR 15:41Z
    bus: mhi: host: pci_generic: Use pci_try_reset_function() to avoid deadlock
    cvelistv5