Modules with Circular Dependencies Affecting kernel-core package, versions *

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-core package and not the kernel-core package as distributed by RHEL. See How to fix? for RHEL:9 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

mm: slub: fix flush_cpu_slab()/__free_slab() invocations in task context.

Commit 5a836bf6b09f ("mm: slub: move flush_cpu_slab() invocations __free_slab() invocations out of IRQ context") moved all flush_cpu_slab() invocations to the global workqueue to avoid a problem related with deactivate_slab()/__free_slab() being called from an IRQ context on PREEMPT_RT kernels.

When the flush_all_cpu_locked() function is called from a task context it may happen that a workqueue with WQ_MEM_RECLAIM bit set ends up flushing the global workqueue, this will cause a dependency issue.

workqueue: WQ_MEM_RECLAIM nvme-delete-wq:nvme_delete_ctrl_work [nvme_core] is flushing !WQ_MEM_RECLAIM events:flush_cpu_slab WARNING: CPU: 37 PID: 410 at kernel/workqueue.c:2637 check_flush_dependency+0x10a/0x120 Workqueue: nvme-delete-wq nvme_delete_ctrl_work [nvme_core] RIP: 0010:check_flush_dependency+0x10a/0x120[ 453.262125] Call Trace: __flush_work.isra.0+0xbf/0x220 ? __queue_work+0x1dc/0x420 flush_all_cpus_locked+0xfb/0x120 __kmem_cache_shutdown+0x2b/0x320 kmem_cache_destroy+0x49/0x100 bioset_exit+0x143/0x190 blk_release_queue+0xb9/0x100 kobject_cleanup+0x37/0x130 nvme_fc_ctrl_free+0xc6/0x150 [nvme_fc] nvme_free_ctrl+0x1ac/0x2b0 [nvme_core]

Fix this bug by creating a workqueue for the flush operation with the WQ_MEM_RECLAIM bit set.

• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2022-48658
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/61703b248be993eb4997b00ae5d3318e6d8f3c5b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/df6cb39335cf5a1b918e8dbd8ba7cd9f1d00e45a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e45cc288724f0cfd497bb5920bcfa60caa335729