CVE-2025-38311

iavf: get rid of the crit lock

State
Published
Severity
Not scored
Published
Jul 10, 2025
Updated
May 23, 2026
Reserved
Apr 16, 2025

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

iavf: get rid of the crit lock

Get rid of the crit lock. That frees us from the error prone logic of try_locks.

Thanks to netdev_lock() by Jakub it is now easy, and in most cases we were protected by it already - replace crit lock by netdev lock when it was not the case.

Lockdep reports that we should cancel the work under crit_lock [splat1], and that was the scheme we have mostly followed since [1] by Slawomir. But when that is done we still got into deadlocks [splat2]. So instead we should look at the bigger problem, namely "weird locking/scheduling" of the iavf. The first step to fix that is to remove the crit lock. I will followup with a -next series that simplifies scheduling/tasks.

Cancel the work without netdev lock (weird unlock+lock scheme), to fix the [splat2] (which would be totally ugly if we would kept the crit lock).

Extend protected part of iavf_watchdog_task() to include scheduling more work.

Note that the removed comment in iavf_reset_task() was misplaced, it belonged to inside of the removed if condition, so it's gone now.

[splat1] - w/o this patch - The deadlock during VF removal: WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected sh/3825 is trying to acquire lock: ((work_completion)(&(&adapter->watchdog_task)->work)){+.+.}-{0:0}, at: start_flush_work+0x1a1/0x470 but task is already holding lock: (&adapter->crit_lock){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: iavf_remove+0xd1/0x690 [iavf] which lock already depends on the new lock.

[splat2] - when cancelling work under crit lock, w/o this series, see [2] for the band aid attempt WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected sh/3550 is trying to acquire lock: ((wq_completion)iavf){+.+.}-{0:0}, at: touch_wq_lockdep_map+0x26/0x90 but task is already holding lock: (&dev->lock){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: iavf_remove+0xa6/0x6e0 [iavf] which lock already depends on the new lock.

[1] fc2e6b3b132a ("iavf: Rework mutexes for better synchronisation") [2] https://github.com/pkitszel/linux/commit/52dddbfc2bb60294083f5711a158a

Scores

The record has no CVSS score.

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • d1639a17319ba78a018280cd2df6577a7e5d9fab to before 620ab4d6215de0b25227f9fff1a8c7fb66837cb8Affected
  • d1639a17319ba78a018280cd2df6577a7e5d9fab to before 120f28a6f314fef7f282c99f196923fe44081cadAffected
  • 2647ff59c52ef42c853c905817ed1a7f092d59a5Affected
  • 63d14a43128540016ebd4f7fa3ad3a2f0d6e642cAffected
  • 6.1.42 to before 6.2Affected
  • 6.4.7 to before 6.5Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 6.5Affected
  • before 6.5Not affected
  • 6.15.3 through 6.15.*Not affected
  • 6.16 and laterNot affected

References

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