High · published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nvdimm/btt: Handle preemption in BTT lane acquisition
BTT lanes serialize access to per-lane metadata and workspace state
during BTT I/O. The btt-check unit test reports data mismatches during
BTT writes due to a race in lane acquisition that can lead to silent
data corruption.
The existing lane model uses a spinlock together with a per-CPU
recursion count. That recursion model stopped being valid after BTT
lanes became preemptible: another task can run on the same CPU,
observe a non-zero recursion count, bypass locking, and use the same
lane concurrently.
BTT lanes are also held across arena_write_bytes() calls. That path
reaches nsio_rw_bytes(), which flushes writes with nvdimm_flush().
Some provider flush callbacks can sleep, making a spinlock the wrong
primitive for the lane lifetime.
Replace the spinlock-based recursion model with a dynamically
allocated per-lane mutex array and take the lane lock
unconditionally.
Add might_sleep() to catch any future atomic-context caller.
Found with the ndctl unit test btt-check.sh.