CVE-2025-38066

dm cache: prevent BUG_ON by blocking retries on failed device resumes

published June 18, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
9.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

dm cache: prevent BUG_ON by blocking retries on failed device resumes

A cache device failing to resume due to mapping errors should not be

retried, as the failure leaves a partially initialized policy object.

Repeating the resume operation risks triggering BUG_ON when reloading

cache mappings into the incomplete policy object.

Reproduce steps:

1. create a cache metadata consisting of 512 or more cache blocks,

with some mappings stored in the first array block of the mapping

array. Here we use cache_restore v1.0 to build the metadata.

cat <<EOF >> cmeta.xml

<superblock uuid="" block_size="128" nr_cache_blocks="512" \

policy="smq" hint_width="4">

<mappings>

<mapping cache_block="0" origin_block="0" dirty="false"/>

</mappings>

</superblock>

EOF

dmsetup create cmeta --table "0 8192 linear /dev/sdc 0"

cache_restore -i cmeta.xml -o /dev/mapper/cmeta --metadata-version=2

dmsetup remove cmeta

2. wipe the second array block of the mapping array to simulate

data degradations.

mapping_root=$(dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1c count=8 skip=192 \

2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '1/8 "%u\n"')

ablock=$(dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1c count=8 skip=$((4096*mapping_root+2056)) \

2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '1/8 "%u\n"')

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=4k count=1 seek=$ablock

3. try bringing up the cache device. The resume is expected to fail

due to the broken array block.

dmsetup create cmeta --table "0 8192 linear /dev/sdc 0"

dmsetup create cdata --table "0 65536 linear /dev/sdc 8192"

dmsetup create corig --table "0 524288 linear /dev/sdc 262144"

dmsetup create cache --notable

dmsetup load cache --table "0 524288 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta \

/dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 2 metadata2 writethrough smq 0"

dmsetup resume cache

4. try resuming the cache again. An unexpected BUG_ON is triggered

while loading cache mappings.

dmsetup resume cache

Kernel logs:

(snip)

------------[ cut here ]------------

kernel BUG at drivers/md/dm-cache-policy-smq.c:752!

Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN NOPTI

CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 332 Comm: dmsetup Not tainted 6.13.4 #3

RIP: 0010:smq_load_mapping+0x3e5/0x570

Fix by disallowing resume operations for devices that failed the

initial attempt.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00199 · 9.2th percentile
Published
2025-06-18T09:33Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 18 JUN 09:33Z
    dm cache: prevent BUG_ON by blocking retries on failed device resumes
    cvelistv5