[BUG] srcu: false-positive WARN in cleanup_srcu_struct() after 78a38cbf6f20

From: Sunho Park

Date: Mon Aug 24 2026 - 06:56:52 EST


The main crash report [1] which is tested on non-merged commit 6b8c8af514d7
is caused by the single-condition WARN_ON(timer_delete_sync(&sdp->delay_work))
in cleanup_srcu_struct(&kvm->irq_srcu). As discussed in [2], it is a false
positive because irq_srcu does not use call_srcu().

However, the merged WARN_ON(timer_delete_sync(&sdp->delay_work) &&
rcu_segcblist_n_cbs(&sdp->srcu_cblist)) is also triggered in
cleanup_srcu_struct(&kvm->srcu) which is called after srcu_barrier() properly.
Although my syz test command [3] failed to reproduce, it was reproducible
in my QEMU environment built with the .config of the report.

I found out that the return value of rcu_segcblist_n_cbs can be nonzero
even after srcu_barrier() because of the srcu_barrier_cb() that srcu_barrier()
inserts at the end of the queue. The length of cblist is decreased after
srcu_invoke_callbacks() finishes invoking all callbacks in a batch. But
srcu_barrier() may return when all the srcu_barrier_cb() are called, bringing
the counter to zero, even if srcu_invoke_callbacks() has not yet decremented
the length. So checking cblist length before flush_work() is inaccurate.

By the comment of srcu_barrier(), it guarantees that all the previously
registered call_srcu() callbacks are completed. Therefore srcu_barrier()
did what it said, only the length of cblist was not updated. I think there
are two options:

1) Not to check the length of cblist before flush_work()
2) Make srcu_barrier() guarantee the length of cblist is adjusted when it returns

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/6a78d191.b50370da.49fe0.0042.GAE@xxxxxxxxxx/T
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/rcu/01484cd339ea024dd7c01f02a9781f00e67cb52d@xxxxxxxxx/T
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/6a8bc111.91706f20.16b6e3.02cd.GAE@xxxxxxxxxx

Reported-by: syzbot+d4faf7db59e11f6fd1ab@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx