published March 25, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects
Found issue during running of cxl-translate.sh unit test. Adding a 3s
sleep right before the test seems to make the issue reproduce fairly
consistently. The cxl_translate module has dependency on cxl_acpi and
causes orphaned nvdimm objects to reprobe after cxl_acpi is removed.
The nvdimm_bus object is registered by the cxl_nvb object when
cxl_acpi_probe() is called. With the nvdimm_bus object missing,
__nd_device_register() will trigger NULL pointer dereference when
accessing the dev->parent that points to &nvdimm_bus->dev.
[ 192.884510] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000006c
[ 192.895383] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS edk2-20250812-19.fc42 08/12/2025
[ 192.897721] Workqueue: cxl_port cxl_bus_rescan_queue [cxl_core]
[ 192.899459] RIP: 0010:kobject_get+0xc/0x90
[ 192.924871] Call Trace:
[ 192.925959] <TASK>
[ 192.926976] ? pm_runtime_init+0xb9/0xe0
[ 192.929712] __nd_device_register.part.0+0x4d/0xc0 [libnvdimm]
[ 192.933314] __nvdimm_create+0x206/0x290 [libnvdimm]
[ 192.936662] cxl_nvdimm_probe+0x119/0x1d0 [cxl_pmem]
[ 192.940245] cxl_bus_probe+0x1a/0x60 [cxl_core]
[ 192.943349] really_probe+0xde/0x380
This patch also relies on the previous change where
devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() is called from drivers/cxl/pmem.c instead
of drivers/cxl/core.c to ensure the dependency of cxl_acpi on cxl_pmem.
1. Set probe_type of cxl_nvb to PROBE_FORCE_SYNCHRONOUS to ensure the
driver is probed synchronously when add_device() is called.
2. Add a check in __devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() to ensure that the
cxl_nvb driver is attached during cxl_acpi_probe().
3. Take the cxl_root uport_dev lock and the cxl_nvb->dev lock in
devm_cxl_add_nvdimm() before checking nvdimm_bus is valid.
4. Set cxl_nvdimm flag to CXL_NVD_F_INVALIDATED so cxl_nvdimm_probe()
will exit with -EBUSY.
The removal of cxl_nvdimm devices should prevent any orphaned devices
from probing once the nvdimm_bus is gone.
[ dj: Fixed 0-day reported kdoc issue. ]
[ dj: Fix cxl_nvb reference leak on error. Gregory (kreview-0811365) ]