mm: don't schedule deferred kernel page table freeing while booting

Overview

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

mm: don't schedule deferred kernel page table freeing while booting

Booting with a boot-time function tracer and a filter, for example

ftrace=function ftrace_filter=pud_free_pmd_page

panics on 7.3-rc4 as soon as the tracer starts:

[ 23.531178] Starting tracer 'function' [ 23.675800] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000038: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI [ 23.819917] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000001c0-0x00000000000001c7] [ 23.964025] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper Not tainted 7.3.0-rc4-fe2ec83746e5-with-fixes-v2+ #195 PREEMPT(undef) [ 24.252248] RIP: 0010:__queue_work+0xab/0xf00 [ 25.981629] Call Trace: [ 26.125727] <TASK> [ 26.413912] ? pagetable_free_kernel+0x20/0x120 [ 26.990283] queue_work_on+0x97/0xf0 [ 27.134382] __cpa_collapse_large_pages+0x501/0x6f0 [ 27.566662] cpa_flush+0x394/0x620 [ 27.998953] change_page_attr_set_clr+0x321/0x4a0 [ 29.151729] set_memory_rox+0xa2/0xf0 [ 29.584018] create_trampoline+0x431/0x6f0 ... [ 44.343347] Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill the idle task!

The boot-time tracer is started from early_trace_init(), which runs before workqueue_init_early(). Making its trampoline read-only splits a large page, and CPA collapses it again right away. The split table has been a kernel page table since commit 9e4a3ec3411b ("x86/mm/pat: Allocate split page tables as kernel page tables"), so the collapse frees it through pagetable_free_kernel(), which queues work on system_percpu_wq - still NULL at that point. That commit is correct in itself; it only lets CPA reach pagetable_free_kernel() before the workqueue that function relies on exists.

Keep putting the table on the list, but don't schedule the work while the system is still booting. A core_initcall schedules it once to free whatever was queued by then.

Affected

• Linux >= 84e0cd79d57f06b872154eb5d8f610584133f260 < 7a25ca170c12a9328f6fcf4410713beb516b01c0
• Linux >= 922873cf4fc34124215070a8ad391bf831538bb9 < df6c704a08bc0925d5db047b0a6221f962bda4d9
• Linux >= 9e4a3ec3411bb6bb59e3c1f29b75609f1e87aac4 < 2fb552b0bee70c24c092720028ab4620f5eb2646
• Linux >= 6.18.53 < 6.18.57
• Linux >= 7.2.7 < 7.2.11

Remediation

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