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WARM1d

[PATCH] ring-buffer: Fix crash passing ERR_PTR to kthread_stop()

From: Hui Su <hidden>
Date: 2026-08-07 15:43:16
Also in: lkml
Subsystem: the rest, tracing · Maintainers: Linus Torvalds, Steven Rostedt, Masami Hiramatsu

In test_ringbuffer()'s out_free cleanup loop, the check
`!rb_threads[cpu]` only catches NULL entries and misses entries that
hold an ERR_PTR.

rb_threads[] is static, so unassigned slots are NULL. But when
kthread_run_on_cpu() fails for a cpu, it stores ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) (or
-EINTR) in rb_threads[cpu] before the creation loop jumps to out_free.
That entry is non-NULL, so the old `!ptr` check does not break, and the
cleanup proceeds to call kthread_stop() on the ERR_PTR. kthread_stop()
then dereferences the bogus pointer, crashing the kernel during the
late_initcall self-test.

crash logs:
  BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000001c
  Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI
  CPU: 1 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 7.2.0-rc6-dirty #7 PREEMPT(lazy)
  RIP: 0010:kthread_stop+0x2e/0x220
  RBX: fffffffffffffff4
  CR2: 000000000000001c
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   test_ringbuffer+0x1ec/0x650
   do_one_initcall+0x6c/0x2c0
   kernel_init_freeable+0x21d/0x420
   kernel_init+0x15/0x1c0
   ret_from_fork+0x21b/0x320
   </TASK>
  Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal exception

Fixes: 64ed3a049e3e ("ring-buffer: make use of the helper function kthread_run_on_cpu()")
Signed-off-by: Hui Su <redacted>
---
 kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
index 8e2485bb3aa8..6af7e36ca526 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
@@ -8214,7 +8214,7 @@ static __init int test_ringbuffer(void)
 
  out_free:
 	for_each_online_cpu(cpu) {
-		if (!rb_threads[cpu])
+		if (IS_ERR_OR_NULL(rb_threads[cpu]))
 			break;
 		kthread_stop(rb_threads[cpu]);
 	}
-- 
2.43.0
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