[PATCH AUTOSEL 6.18] xfrm: Wait for RCU readers during policy netns exit

From: Sasha Levin

Date: Mon Apr 20 2026 - 10:10:57 EST


From: Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@xxxxxxxxxxx>

[ Upstream commit 069daad4f2ae9c5c108131995529d5f02392c446 ]

xfrm_policy_fini() frees the policy_bydst hash tables after flushing the
policy work items and deleting all policies, but it does not wait for
concurrent RCU readers to leave their read-side critical sections first.

The policy_bydst tables are published via rcu_assign_pointer() and are
looked up through rcu_dereference_check(), so netns teardown must also
wait for an RCU grace period before freeing the table memory.

Fix this by adding synchronize_rcu() before freeing the policy hash tables.

Fixes: e1e551bc5630 ("xfrm: policy: prepare policy_bydst hash for rcu lookups")
Signed-off-by: Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Reviewed-by: Florian Westphal <fw@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx>
---

LLM Generated explanations, may be completely bogus:

Error: Failed to generate final synthesis

net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c | 2 ++
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)

diff --git a/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c b/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
index c32d34c441ee0..4526c9078b136 100644
--- a/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
+++ b/net/xfrm/xfrm_policy.c
@@ -4290,6 +4290,8 @@ static void xfrm_policy_fini(struct net *net)
#endif
xfrm_policy_flush(net, XFRM_POLICY_TYPE_MAIN, false);

+ synchronize_rcu();
+
WARN_ON(!list_empty(&net->xfrm.policy_all));

for (dir = 0; dir < XFRM_POLICY_MAX; dir++) {
--
2.53.0