Re: [syzbot] [kernel?] WARNING in stub_timer (2)

From: Thomas Gleixner

Date: Sat Jun 20 2026 - 17:35:27 EST


On Mon, Jun 15 2026 at 00:39, syzbot wrote:
> WARNING: kernel/time/hrtimer.c:443 at stub_timer+0xa/0x20 kernel/time/timer.c:716, CPU#0: udevd/4706

So this puzzled me a bit as the stub_timer callback is only installed
when the hrtimer object is not initialized according to the debug
objects tracking. But that would cause a debug objects warning splat,
which is not there.

Then I discovered this in the console log a few seconds before the warning:

ODEBUG: Out of memory. ODEBUG disabled

So that made me dig into debug_object_assert_init() and I discovered the
following issue:

debug_assert_init()
if (!enabled)
return; obj = alloc();
if (!obj)
enabled = false;
free_objects();
obj = lookup_or_alloc();

// Lookup failed because the other side
// removed the objects, but it returns
// an error code as the object in question
// is not statically initialized

if (!IS_ERR_OR_NULL(obj))
return;
if (!obj) {
debug_oom();
return;
}

print(...)
if (!enabled)
return;

fixup(...)

So invoking the fixup callback in that case without checking again
whether debug_objects is still enabled causes the above problem.

Fix below.

Thanks,

tglx
---
diff --git a/lib/debugobjects.c b/lib/debugobjects.c
index 6fb00e08a4e2..d7a02a943ac9 100644
--- a/lib/debugobjects.c
+++ b/lib/debugobjects.c
@@ -894,6 +894,14 @@ int debug_object_activate(void *addr, const struct debug_obj_descr *descr)
}

raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&db->lock, flags);
+
+ /*
+ * lookup_object_or_alloc() might have raced with a concurrent
+ * allocation failure which disabled debug objects.
+ */
+ if (!debug_objects_enabled)
+ return 0;
+
debug_print_object(&o, "activate");

switch (o.state) {
@@ -1071,6 +1079,15 @@ void debug_object_assert_init(void *addr, const struct debug_obj_descr *descr)
return;
}

+ /*
+ * lookup_object_or_alloc() might have raced with a concurrent
+ * allocation failure which disabled debug objects. Don't run the fixup
+ * as it might turn a valid object useless. See for example
+ * hrtimer_fixup_assert_init().
+ */
+ if (!debug_objects_enabled)
+ return;
+
/* Object is neither tracked nor static. It's not initialized. */
debug_print_object(&o, "assert_init");
debug_object_fixup(descr->fixup_assert_init, addr, ODEBUG_STATE_NOTAVAILABLE);