In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: blk-iolatency: clear delay state when freeing policy data io.latency can throttle a group which has no latency target of its own. When a sibling misses its target, che…

Overview

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

blk-iolatency: clear delay state when freeing policy data

io.latency can throttle a group which has no latency target of its own. When a sibling misses its target, check_scale_change() scales down its peers, and a peer that reaches queue depth one gets blkcg_use_delay() called on it on every further scale-down, even with min_lat_nsec == 0.

iolatency_pd_offline() resets the target through iolatency_set_min_lat_nsec(), which clears the delay only on a nonzero to zero transition, so it never clears such a peer. Freeing the policy data then leaves blkg->use_delay set and blkcg->congestion_count elevated with nothing left that can drop it.

blk_cgroup_congested() then returns true for every task in that cgroup and its descendants for as long as the cgroup lives: page_cache_sync_ra() cuts readahead to a single page, page_cache_async_ra() skips it altogether, and __folio_throttle_swaprate() takes swap_avail_lock and schedules a throttle on anonymous folio allocation.

Clear the delay in iolatency_pd_free(). By then bio-held blkg references have drained, or the queue is frozen for policy deactivation, so check_scale_change() cannot re-arm it. The free callback can also see policy data which was never attached to a blkg, hence the pd->blkg check.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.