Re: CVE-2025-40146: blk-mq: fix potential deadlock while nr_requests grown

From: yangerkun

Date: Fri Nov 28 2025 - 01:33:40 EST




在 2025/11/28 13:20, Nilay Shroff 写道:


On 11/28/25 6:45 AM, Zheng Qixing wrote:

在 2025/11/27 21:39, Greg KH 写道:
On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 09:22:42PM +0800, Zheng Qixing wrote:
Hi,

Commit b86433721f46 ("blk-mq: fix potential deadlock while nr_requests
grown")  aims to avoid a deadlock issue when the queue is frozen and memory
reclaim is triggered.

However, the sysfs nr_requests update path is already under a
memalloc_noio_save() region while the queue is frozen (via
blk_mq_freeze_queue()).
Did the lockdep splat in
https://lore.kernel.org/all/0659ea8d-a463-47c8-9180-43c719e106eb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/
not describe the issue here that the commit is attempting to solve?

thanks,

greg k-h


The deadlock issue described in this link is about elevator switch path, but the patch modifies sysfs nr_requests update path.

I didn't identify any potential deadlock issues on this path. If I misunderstood something, could someone help clarify?


Let me clarify the confusion here.

The deadlock reported in [1] requires updates across multiple code paths. There are
three distinct paths that need to be fixed to avoid the deadlock. While the report
in [1] only exposed the issue in one of these paths, we already knew that all three
paths needed changes to fully resolve the problem:

1. Elevator change path (via sysfs attribute) that triggers a scheduler tags update
2. Elevator change path triggered by an nr_hw_queues update which also triggers a
scheduler tags update
3. Scheduler tags update triggered through the nr_requests sysfs attribute (please
note when nr_requests grows beyond current queue depth it triggers scheduler
tags update)

commit b86433721f46d934940528f28d49c1dedb690df1 (HEAD -> master)
Author: Yu Kuai <yukuai3@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed Sep 10 16:04:43 2025 +0800

blk-mq: fix potential deadlock while nr_requests grown

Allocate and free sched_tags while queue is freezed can deadlock[1],
this is a long term problem, hence allocate memory before freezing
queue and free memory after queue is unfreezed.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/0659ea8d-a463-47c8-9180-43c719e106eb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Fixes: e3a2b3f931f5 ("blk-mq: allow changing of queue depth through sysfs")

Signed-off-by: Yu Kuai <yukuai3@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Nilay Shroff <nilay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx>

We are assume that what's the problem Yu describe is when we update
nr_request, we may need some memory allocation(nr_requests grows). And
the memory allocation may trigger some memory reclaim, and fall into
another I/O process, and since the request_queue has been freezen, there
exist deadlock.

But after checking the source code, there exist
queue_requests_store->blk_mq_freeze_queue->memalloc_noio_save, the
whole process which may trigger memory allocation won't trigger I/O
process. So deadlock can not happened... And if that's true, this patch
does not fix any problem.

Thanks,
Erkun.


The first two code paths were addressed by:
commit f5a6604f7a44 (“block: fix lockdep warning caused by lock dependency in
elv_iosched_store”), and commit 04225d13aef1 (“block: fix potential deadlock while
running nr_hw_queue update”) respectively.

The third code path was fixed by:
commit b86433721f46 (“blk-mq: fix potential deadlock while nr_requests grown”).

Ideally, all of these commits should be referenced as collectively fixing the lockdep
splat reported in [1]. I hope this clarifies the situation. Please let me know if you
have any further questions.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/0659ea8d-a463-47c8-9180-43c719e106eb@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/

Thanks,
--Nilay