CVE-2025-38503

btrfs: fix assertion when building free space tree

published August 16, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
4.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

btrfs: fix assertion when building free space tree

When building the free space tree with the block group tree feature

enabled, we can hit an assertion failure like this:

BTRFS info (device loop0 state M): rebuilding free space tree

assertion failed: ret == 0, in fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1102

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

kernel BUG at fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1102!

Internal error: Oops - BUG: 00000000f2000800 [#1] SMP

Modules linked in:

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 6592 Comm: syz-executor322 Not tainted 6.15.0-rc7-syzkaller-gd7fa1af5b33e #0 PREEMPT

Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 05/07/2025

pstate: 60400005 (nZCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)

pc : populate_free_space_tree+0x514/0x518 fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1102

lr : populate_free_space_tree+0x514/0x518 fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1102

sp : ffff8000a4ce7600

x29: ffff8000a4ce76e0 x28: ffff0000c9bc6000 x27: ffff0000ddfff3d8

x26: ffff0000ddfff378 x25: dfff800000000000 x24: 0000000000000001

x23: ffff8000a4ce7660 x22: ffff70001499cecc x21: ffff0000e1d8c160

x20: ffff0000e1cb7800 x19: ffff0000e1d8c0b0 x18: 00000000ffffffff

x17: ffff800092f39000 x16: ffff80008ad27e48 x15: ffff700011e740c0

x14: 1ffff00011e740c0 x13: 0000000000000004 x12: ffffffffffffffff

x11: ffff700011e740c0 x10: 0000000000ff0100 x9 : 94ef24f55d2dbc00

x8 : 94ef24f55d2dbc00 x7 : 0000000000000001 x6 : 0000000000000001

x5 : ffff8000a4ce6f98 x4 : ffff80008f415ba0 x3 : ffff800080548ef0

x2 : 0000000000000000 x1 : 0000000100000000 x0 : 000000000000003e

Call trace:

populate_free_space_tree+0x514/0x518 fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1102 (P)

btrfs_rebuild_free_space_tree+0x14c/0x54c fs/btrfs/free-space-tree.c:1337

btrfs_start_pre_rw_mount+0xa78/0xe10 fs/btrfs/disk-io.c:3074

btrfs_remount_rw fs/btrfs/super.c:1319 [inline]

btrfs_reconfigure+0x828/0x2418 fs/btrfs/super.c:1543

reconfigure_super+0x1d4/0x6f0 fs/super.c:1083

do_remount fs/namespace.c:3365 [inline]

path_mount+0xb34/0xde0 fs/namespace.c:4200

do_mount fs/namespace.c:4221 [inline]

__do_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:4432 [inline]

__se_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:4409 [inline]

__arm64_sys_mount+0x3e8/0x468 fs/namespace.c:4409

__invoke_syscall arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:35 [inline]

invoke_syscall+0x98/0x2b8 arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:49

el0_svc_common+0x130/0x23c arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:132

do_el0_svc+0x48/0x58 arch/arm64/kernel/syscall.c:151

el0_svc+0x58/0x17c arch/arm64/kernel/entry-common.c:767

el0t_64_sync_handler+0x78/0x108 arch/arm64/kernel/entry-common.c:786

el0t_64_sync+0x198/0x19c arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S:600

Code: f0047182 91178042 528089c3 9771d47b (d4210000)

---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

This happens because we are processing an empty block group, which has

no extents allocated from it, there are no items for this block group,

including the block group item since block group items are stored in a

dedicated tree when using the block group tree feature. It also means

this is the block group with the highest start offset, so there are no

higher keys in the extent root, hence btrfs_search_slot_for_read()

returns 1 (no higher key found).

Fix this by asserting 'ret' is 0 only if the block group tree feature

is not enabled, in which case we should find a block group item for

the block group since it's stored in the extent root and block group

item keys are greater than extent item keys (the value for

BTRFS_BLOCK_GROUP_ITEM_KEY is 192 and for BTRFS_EXTENT_ITEM_KEY and

BTRFS_METADATA_ITEM_KEY the values are 168 and 169 respectively).

In case 'ret' is 1, we just need to add a record to the free space

tree which spans the whole block group, and we can achieve this by

making 'ret == 0' as the while loop's condition.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00155 · 4.3th percentile
Published
2025-08-16T10:54Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 16 AUG 10:54Z
    btrfs: fix assertion when building free space tree
    cvelistv5