[PATCH net] net: reject dev_weight products that overflow int

From: Jiayuan Chen

Date: Fri Oct 23 2026 - 07:45:49 EST


proc_do_dev_weight() sets the backlog NAPI weight and the qdisc quota
to dev_weight * dev_weight_rx_bias and dev_weight * dev_weight_tx_bias.
The three sysctls only have a lower bound of 1, so the products can
overflow int and end up <= 0, e.g. dev_weight=65536 and
dev_weight_rx_bias=65536 give a backlog weight of 0.

With a weight <= 0, __napi_poll() never sees work < weight. Once
process_backlog() drains the queue and completes the NAPI by itself,
__napi_poll() still asks for a repoll, so net_rx_action() keeps putting
back a NAPI that is no longer scheduled and NET_RX spins on that CPU
with nothing to do. Restoring the sysctls does not help, as napi->weight
is only refreshed by process_backlog(), which is never called again.

After 3 pings over lo on CPU 2, with CONFIG_DEBUG_NET:

(NULL net_device): NAPI poll function process_backlog+0x0/0x1200 returned 1, exceeding its budget of 0.
repoll requested for device (efault) process_backlog but napi is not scheduled.
repoll requested for device (efault) process_backlog but napi is not scheduled.
...

and with nothing queued anymore, NET_RX keeps running on CPU 2:

NET_RX on cpu2: +454190 in 5s, ksoftirqd/2 at ~82% CPU

Reject writes that make either product overflow int, and print the
values involved.

Fixes: 3d48b53fb2ae ("net: dev_weight: TX/RX orthogonality")
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Jiayuan Chen <jiayuan.chen@xxxxxxxxx>
---
net/core/sysctl_net_core.c | 15 ++++++++++++---
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/core/sysctl_net_core.c b/net/core/sysctl_net_core.c
index 473c162736d6..4f3796bc8870 100644
--- a/net/core/sysctl_net_core.c
+++ b/net/core/sysctl_net_core.c
@@ -318,14 +318,23 @@ static int proc_do_dev_weight(const struct ctl_table *table, int write,
void *buffer, size_t *lenp, loff_t *ppos)
{
static DEFINE_MUTEX(dev_weight_mutex);
- int ret, weight;
+ int ret, weight, old, rx, tx;

mutex_lock(&dev_weight_mutex);
+ old = *(int *)table->data;
ret = proc_dointvec_minmax(table, write, buffer, lenp, ppos);
if (!ret && write) {
weight = READ_ONCE(weight_p);
- WRITE_ONCE(net_hotdata.dev_rx_weight, weight * dev_weight_rx_bias);
- WRITE_ONCE(net_hotdata.dev_tx_weight, weight * dev_weight_tx_bias);
+ if (check_mul_overflow(weight, dev_weight_rx_bias, &rx) ||
+ check_mul_overflow(weight, dev_weight_tx_bias, &tx)) {
+ pr_warn("dev_weight(%d) * (rx_bias(%d) or tx_bias(%d)) overflows int\n",
+ weight, dev_weight_rx_bias, dev_weight_tx_bias);
+ WRITE_ONCE(*(int *)table->data, old);
+ ret = -EINVAL;
+ } else {
+ WRITE_ONCE(net_hotdata.dev_rx_weight, rx);
+ WRITE_ONCE(net_hotdata.dev_tx_weight, tx);
+ }
}
mutex_unlock(&dev_weight_mutex);

--
2.43.0