[PATCH] af_packet: fix soft lockup issue caused by tpacket_snd()
From: Yun Lu
Date: Mon Jul 07 2025 - 04:17:16 EST
From: Yun Lu <luyun@xxxxxxxxxx>
When MSG_DONTWAIT is not set, the tpacket_snd operation will wait for
pending_refcnt to decrement to zero before returning. The pending_refcnt
is decremented by 1 when the skb->destructor function is called,
indicating that the skb has been successfully sent and needs to be
destroyed.
If an error occurs during this process, the tpacket_snd() function will
exit and return error, but pending_refcnt may not yet have decremented to
zero. Assuming the next send operation is executed immediately, but there
are no available frames to be sent in tx_ring (i.e., packet_current_frame
returns NULL), and skb is also NULL, the function will not execute
wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout() to yield the CPU. Instead, it
will enter a do-while loop, waiting for pending_refcnt to be zero. Even
if the previous skb has completed transmission, the skb->destructor
function can only be invoked in the ksoftirqd thread (assuming NAPI
threading is enabled). When both the ksoftirqd thread and the tpacket_snd
operation happen to run on the same CPU, and the CPU trapped in the
do-while loop without yielding, the ksoftirqd thread will not get
scheduled to run. As a result, pending_refcnt will never be reduced to
zero, and the do-while loop cannot exit, eventually leading to a CPU soft
lockup issue.
In fact, as long as pending_refcnt is not zero, even if skb is NULL,
wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout() should be executed to yield
the CPU, allowing the ksoftirqd thread to be scheduled. Therefore, the
execution condition of this function should be modified to check if
pending_refcnt is not zero.
Signed-off-by: Yun Lu <luyun@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
net/packet/af_packet.c | 2 +-
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/net/packet/af_packet.c b/net/packet/af_packet.c
index 3d43f3eae759..7df96311adb8 100644
--- a/net/packet/af_packet.c
+++ b/net/packet/af_packet.c
@@ -2845,7 +2845,7 @@ static int tpacket_snd(struct packet_sock *po, struct msghdr *msg)
ph = packet_current_frame(po, &po->tx_ring,
TP_STATUS_SEND_REQUEST);
if (unlikely(ph == NULL)) {
- if (need_wait && skb) {
+ if (need_wait && packet_read_pending(&po->tx_ring)) {
timeo = sock_sndtimeo(&po->sk, msg->msg_flags & MSG_DONTWAIT);
timeo = wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(&po->skb_completion, timeo);
if (timeo <= 0) {
--
2.43.0