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CVE-2025-37859: page_pool: avoid infinite loop to schedule delayed worker

Description

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

page_pool: avoid infinite loop to schedule delayed worker

We noticed the kworker in page_pool_release_retry() was waken
up repeatedly and infinitely in production because of the
buggy driver causing the inflight less than 0 and warning
us in page_pool_inflight()[1].

Since the inflight value goes negative, it means we should
not expect the whole page_pool to get back to work normally.

This patch mitigates the adverse effect by not rescheduling
the kworker when detecting the inflight negative in
page_pool_release_retry().

[1]
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] Negative(-51446) inflight packet-pages
...
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] Call Trace:
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] page_pool_release_retry+0x23/0x70
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] process_one_work+0x1b1/0x370
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] worker_thread+0x37/0x3a0
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] kthread+0x11a/0x140
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] ? process_one_work+0x370/0x370
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] ? __kthread_cancel_work+0x40/0x40
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] ret_from_fork+0x35/0x40
[Mon Feb 10 20:36:11 2025] ---[ end trace ebffe800f33e7e34 ]---
Note: before this patch, the above calltrace would flood the
dmesg due to repeated reschedule of release_dw kworker.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-37859

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.04% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 12.8% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-06-07 (when was this score calculated)

References

Timeline

2025-05-09 07:40:14 UTC
CVE

page_pool: avoid infinite loop to schedule delayed worker