High · published December 4, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nios2: ensure that memblock.current_limit is set when setting pfn limits
On nios2, with CONFIG_FLATMEM set, the kernel relies on
memblock_get_current_limit() to determine the limits of mem_map, in
particular for max_low_pfn.
Unfortunately, memblock.current_limit is only default initialized to
MEMBLOCK_ALLOC_ANYWHERE at this point of the bootup, potentially leading
to situations where max_low_pfn can erroneously exceed the value of
max_pfn and, thus, the valid range of available DRAM.
This can in turn cause kernel-level paging failures, e.g.:
[ 76.900000] Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 20303000
[ 76.900000] ea = c0080890, ra = c000462c, cause = 14
[ 76.900000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops
[ 76.900000] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops ]---
This patch fixes this by pre-calculating memblock.current_limit
based on the upper limits of the available memory ranges via
adjust_lowmem_bounds, a simplified version of the equivalent
implementation within the arm architecture.