Re: [RFC PATCH] io_uring/cmd: don't skip completion for a non-armed multishot uring_cmd

From: Vasileios Almpanis

Date: Thu Aug 20 2026 - 15:01:55 EST


Hi everyone,

Just a gentle ping on this patch.

The issue is syzbot-reproduced and the proposed fix has been run with #syz test.
The patch addresses the leak in the core |io_uring_cmd()|path rather than
relying on individual providers to handle |IORING_URING_CMD_MULTISHOT|.

Could someone take a look when you get a chance?

Thanks,
Vasileios


On 8/11/26 10:42 PM, Vasileios Almpanis wrote:
io_uring_cmd() treats any uring_cmd carrying IORING_URING_CMD_MULTISHOT
that returns >= 0 as "multishot armed, completion deferred" and returns
IOU_ISSUE_SKIP_COMPLETE, expecting the provider to complete the request
later. But the flag is user-controlled and validated only against buffer
select, not against provider capability. A ->uring_cmd() handler that
does not implement multishot and returns a normal >= 0 result then has
its request skipped and never completed, leaking the io_kiocb and its
io_async_cmd:

BUG: memory leak
unreferenced object (size 248):
kmem_cache_alloc_bulk_noprof+0x272/0x3f0
__io_alloc_req_refill+0x4a/0x150
io_submit_sqes.cold+0x16e/0x20b
__do_sys_io_uring_enter+0x56d/0xd60

syzbot hit this via ublk UBLK_U_CMD_ADD_DEV, but it is kernel-wide: the
same leak reproduces with SOCKET_URING_OP_SIOCINQ on any socket fd, which
returns the queued byte count and never inspects cmd->flags. No in-tree
provider of multishot actually returns >= 0. Both io_cmd_poll_multishot()
and ublk_handle_batch_fetch_cmd return -EIOCBQUEUED,

Only skip completion when the command is really multishot, i.e.
REQ_F_APOLL_MULTISHOT is set. Otherwise fall through and complete the
request normally with its result.

Fixes: 620a50c92700 ("io_uring: uring_cmd: add multishot support")
Reported-by: syzbot+a4ccdd7ebf452e4d4701@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Closes: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=a4ccdd7ebf452e4d4701
Tested-by: syzbot+a4ccdd7ebf452e4d4701@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Vasileios Almpanis <vasilisalmpanis@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Questions / Notes:
- I put this in the core io_uring_cmd() rather than in provider specific
code because the leak is independent of the provider. From my research
so far no ->uring_cmd() rejects IORING_URING_CMD_MULTISHOT, they just
ignore it. The flag is only validated against buffer-select in
io_uring_cmd_prep(). So any handler that returns a plain >= 0 result
with the user-set flag leaks.
- Instead of checking if it has been really armed should we just drop
the >= 0 check? The in-tree code that supports multishot returns
-EIOCBQUEUED from what I have seen so far.
---
io_uring/uring_cmd.c | 3 ++-
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/io_uring/uring_cmd.c b/io_uring/uring_cmd.c
index c14c22cff49e..a2899a852879 100644
--- a/io_uring/uring_cmd.c
+++ b/io_uring/uring_cmd.c
@@ -269,7 +269,8 @@ int io_uring_cmd(struct io_kiocb *req, unsigned int issue_flags)
}
ret = file->f_op->uring_cmd(ioucmd, issue_flags);
- if (ioucmd->flags & IORING_URING_CMD_MULTISHOT) {
+ if ((ioucmd->flags & IORING_URING_CMD_MULTISHOT) &&
+ (req->flags & REQ_F_APOLL_MULTISHOT)) {
if (ret >= 0)
return IOU_ISSUE_SKIP_COMPLETE;
}

---
base-commit: d58772d8520c7ef247c4b95c9bd76d3a25da9ff5
change-id: 20260811-io_uring-169337c74617

Best regards,
--
Vasileios Almpanis <vasilisalmpanis@xxxxxxxxx>