[PATCH 5.10.y 0/2] backport to fix a race condition/UAF in the padata subsystem

From: Bin Lan

Date: Tue Apr 28 2026 - 05:15:24 EST


This series backports the padata use-after-free fix and its follow-up
cleanup to the 5.10.y stable branch. There is a race condition in
padata_reorder() dating back to the initial padata commit.

Backport notes for 5.10.y:

- The upstream fix (commit 71203f68c774) was written against mainline
which uses the 2-argument cpumask_next_wrap(cpu, mask) API introduced
by dc5bb9b769c9 ("cpumask: deprecate cpumask_next_wrap()"). Since
6.1.y still has the original 4-argument API, the call in
padata_reorder() is adapted to:
cpumask_next_wrap(cpu, pd->cpumask.pcpu, -1, false)
This is functionally equivalent.

- The context in padata_find_next() differs from mainline due to
f954a2d37637 ("padata: switch padata_find_next() to using
cpumask_next_wrap()") not being present in 6.1.y. The conflict was
resolved.

After applying this series, kernel/padata.c matches the upstream file at
commit 71203f68c774 with a few differences. None of these differences
affect the fix, the core changes to padata_find_next(), padata_reorder(),
and padata_do_serial() are identical.

Testing:
- Built and booted on x86_64 (4 CPUs)
- All 4 test cases passed:
* Basic parallel->serial reorder (64 jobs)
* Out-of-order parallel completion reorder (64 jobs)
* Concurrent jobs + padata_replace race (64 jobs)
* Stress test (10 iterations x 64 jobs, random delays)
- No KASAN/BUG/WARNING/UAF detected in dmesg

Bin Lan

Herbert Xu (2):
padata: Fix pd UAF once and for all
padata: Remove comment for reorder_work

include/linux/padata.h | 4 --
kernel/padata.c | 136 +++++++++++------------------------------
2 files changed, 37 insertions(+), 103 deletions(-)

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2.43.0