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

mm/shmem, swap: fix softlockup with mTHP swapin

Following softlockup can be easily reproduced on my test machine with:

echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-64kB/enabled
swapon /dev/zram0 # zram0 is a 48G swap device
mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test
echo 1G > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.max
echo $BASHPID > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/cgroup.procs
while true; do
dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.img bs=1M count=5120
cat /tmp/test.img > /dev/null
rm /tmp/test.img
done

Then after a while:
watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 763s! [cat:5787]
Modules linked in: zram virtiofs
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 5787 Comm: cat Kdump: loaded Tainted: G L 6.15.0.orig-gf3021d9246bc-dirty #118 PREEMPT(voluntary)·
Tainted: [L]=SOFTLOCKUP
Hardware name: Red Hat KVM/RHEL-AV, BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015
RIP: 0010:mpol_shared_policy_lookup+0xd/0x70
Code: e9 b8 b4 ff ff 31 c0 c3 cc cc cc cc 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 66 0f 1f 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 41 54 55 53 <48> 8b 1f 48 85 db 74 41 4c 8d 67 08 48 89 fb 48 89 f5 4c 89 e7 e8
RSP: 0018:ffffc90002b1fc28 EFLAGS: 00000202
RAX: 00000000001c20ca RBX: 0000000000724e1e RCX: 0000000000000001
RDX: ffff888118e214c8 RSI: 0000000000057d42 RDI: ffff888118e21518
RBP: 000000000002bec8 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: 0000000000000bf4 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000001
R13: 00000000001c20ca R14: 00000000001c20ca R15: 0000000000000000
FS: 00007f03f995c740(0000) GS:ffff88a07ad9a000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
CR2: 00007f03f98f1000 CR3: 0000000144626004 CR4: 0000000000770eb0
DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
PKRU: 55555554
Call Trace:
<TASK>
shmem_alloc_folio+0x31/0xc0
shmem_swapin_folio+0x309/0xcf0
? filemap_get_entry+0x117/0x1e0
? xas_load+0xd/0xb0
? filemap_get_entry+0x101/0x1e0
shmem_get_folio_gfp+0x2ed/0x5b0
shmem_file_read_iter+0x7f/0x2e0
vfs_read+0x252/0x330
ksys_read+0x68/0xf0
do_syscall_64+0x4c/0x1c0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e
RIP: 0033:0x7f03f9a46991
Code: 00 48 8b 15 81 14 10 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 b8 ff ff ff ff eb bd e8 20 ad 01 00 f3 0f 1e fa 80 3d 35 97 10 00 00 74 13 31 c0 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 4f c3 66 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 48 89 e5 48 83 ec
RSP: 002b:00007fff3c52bd28 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000
RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000040000 RCX: 00007f03f9a46991
RDX: 0000000000040000 RSI: 00007f03f98ba000 RDI: 0000000000000003
RBP: 00007fff3c52bd50 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 00007f03f9b9a380
R10: 0000000000000022 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000040000
R13: 00007f03f98ba000 R14: 0000000000000003 R15: 0000000000000000
</TASK>

The reason is simple, readahead brought some order 0 folio in swap cache,
and the swapin mTHP folio being allocated is in conflict with it, so
swapcache_prepare fails and causes shmem_swap_alloc_folio to return
-EEXIST, and shmem simply retries again and again causing this loop.

Fix it by applying a similar fix for anon mTHP swapin.

The performance change is very slight, time of swapin 10g zero folios
with shmem (test for 12 times):
Before: 2.47s
After: 2.48s

[kasong@tencent.com: add comment]
Published: 2025-07-09
Score: 5.5 Medium
EPSS: < 1% Very Low
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

No vendor fix or workaround currently provided.

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Tracking

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Advisories
Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2025-20820 In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/shmem, swap: fix softlockup with mTHP swapin Following softlockup can be easily reproduced on my test machine with: echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-64kB/enabled swapon /dev/zram0 # zram0 is a 48G swap device mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test echo 1G > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.max echo $BASHPID > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/cgroup.procs while true; do dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.img bs=1M count=5120 cat /tmp/test.img > /dev/null rm /tmp/test.img done Then after a while: watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 763s! [cat:5787] Modules linked in: zram virtiofs CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 5787 Comm: cat Kdump: loaded Tainted: G L 6.15.0.orig-gf3021d9246bc-dirty #118 PREEMPT(voluntary)· Tainted: [L]=SOFTLOCKUP Hardware name: Red Hat KVM/RHEL-AV, BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015 RIP: 0010:mpol_shared_policy_lookup+0xd/0x70 Code: e9 b8 b4 ff ff 31 c0 c3 cc cc cc cc 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 66 0f 1f 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 41 54 55 53 <48> 8b 1f 48 85 db 74 41 4c 8d 67 08 48 89 fb 48 89 f5 4c 89 e7 e8 RSP: 0018:ffffc90002b1fc28 EFLAGS: 00000202 RAX: 00000000001c20ca RBX: 0000000000724e1e RCX: 0000000000000001 RDX: ffff888118e214c8 RSI: 0000000000057d42 RDI: ffff888118e21518 RBP: 000000000002bec8 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000bf4 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000001 R13: 00000000001c20ca R14: 00000000001c20ca R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 00007f03f995c740(0000) GS:ffff88a07ad9a000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f03f98f1000 CR3: 0000000144626004 CR4: 0000000000770eb0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> shmem_alloc_folio+0x31/0xc0 shmem_swapin_folio+0x309/0xcf0 ? filemap_get_entry+0x117/0x1e0 ? xas_load+0xd/0xb0 ? filemap_get_entry+0x101/0x1e0 shmem_get_folio_gfp+0x2ed/0x5b0 shmem_file_read_iter+0x7f/0x2e0 vfs_read+0x252/0x330 ksys_read+0x68/0xf0 do_syscall_64+0x4c/0x1c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e RIP: 0033:0x7f03f9a46991 Code: 00 48 8b 15 81 14 10 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 b8 ff ff ff ff eb bd e8 20 ad 01 00 f3 0f 1e fa 80 3d 35 97 10 00 00 74 13 31 c0 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 4f c3 66 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 48 89 e5 48 83 ec RSP: 002b:00007fff3c52bd28 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000040000 RCX: 00007f03f9a46991 RDX: 0000000000040000 RSI: 00007f03f98ba000 RDI: 0000000000000003 RBP: 00007fff3c52bd50 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 00007f03f9b9a380 R10: 0000000000000022 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000040000 R13: 00007f03f98ba000 R14: 0000000000000003 R15: 0000000000000000 </TASK> The reason is simple, readahead brought some order 0 folio in swap cache, and the swapin mTHP folio being allocated is in conflict with it, so swapcache_prepare fails and causes shmem_swap_alloc_folio to return -EEXIST, and shmem simply retries again and again causing this loop. Fix it by applying a similar fix for anon mTHP swapin. The performance change is very slight, time of swapin 10g zero folios with shmem (test for 12 times): Before: 2.47s After: 2.48s [kasong@tencent.com: add comment]
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7833-1 Linux kernel vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7834-1 Linux kernel (Azure) vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7833-2 Linux kernel (Real-time) vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7833-3 Linux kernel (AWS) vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7833-4 Linux kernel (GCP) vulnerabilities
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-7856-1 Linux kernel (HWE) vulnerabilities
History

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 16:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Weaknesses CWE-667
CPEs cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.16:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*
cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.16:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:*
cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.16:rc3:*:*:*:*:*:*

Tue, 15 Jul 2025 13:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics epss

{'score': 0.00018}

 epss

{'score': 0.00024}

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 00:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References
Metrics threat_severity

None

 cvssV3_1

{'score': 5.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H'}

threat_severity

Moderate

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 10:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Description In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/shmem, swap: fix softlockup with mTHP swapin Following softlockup can be easily reproduced on my test machine with: echo always > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/hugepages-64kB/enabled swapon /dev/zram0 # zram0 is a 48G swap device mkdir -p /sys/fs/cgroup/memory/test echo 1G > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/memory.max echo $BASHPID > /sys/fs/cgroup/test/cgroup.procs while true; do dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/test.img bs=1M count=5120 cat /tmp/test.img > /dev/null rm /tmp/test.img done Then after a while: watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 763s! [cat:5787] Modules linked in: zram virtiofs CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 5787 Comm: cat Kdump: loaded Tainted: G L 6.15.0.orig-gf3021d9246bc-dirty #118 PREEMPT(voluntary)· Tainted: [L]=SOFTLOCKUP Hardware name: Red Hat KVM/RHEL-AV, BIOS 0.0.0 02/06/2015 RIP: 0010:mpol_shared_policy_lookup+0xd/0x70 Code: e9 b8 b4 ff ff 31 c0 c3 cc cc cc cc 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 66 0f 1f 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 41 54 55 53 <48> 8b 1f 48 85 db 74 41 4c 8d 67 08 48 89 fb 48 89 f5 4c 89 e7 e8 RSP: 0018:ffffc90002b1fc28 EFLAGS: 00000202 RAX: 00000000001c20ca RBX: 0000000000724e1e RCX: 0000000000000001 RDX: ffff888118e214c8 RSI: 0000000000057d42 RDI: ffff888118e21518 RBP: 000000000002bec8 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000bf4 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000001 R13: 00000000001c20ca R14: 00000000001c20ca R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 00007f03f995c740(0000) GS:ffff88a07ad9a000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f03f98f1000 CR3: 0000000144626004 CR4: 0000000000770eb0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> shmem_alloc_folio+0x31/0xc0 shmem_swapin_folio+0x309/0xcf0 ? filemap_get_entry+0x117/0x1e0 ? xas_load+0xd/0xb0 ? filemap_get_entry+0x101/0x1e0 shmem_get_folio_gfp+0x2ed/0x5b0 shmem_file_read_iter+0x7f/0x2e0 vfs_read+0x252/0x330 ksys_read+0x68/0xf0 do_syscall_64+0x4c/0x1c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e RIP: 0033:0x7f03f9a46991 Code: 00 48 8b 15 81 14 10 00 f7 d8 64 89 02 b8 ff ff ff ff eb bd e8 20 ad 01 00 f3 0f 1e fa 80 3d 35 97 10 00 00 74 13 31 c0 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 4f c3 66 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 48 89 e5 48 83 ec RSP: 002b:00007fff3c52bd28 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000000 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 0000000000040000 RCX: 00007f03f9a46991 RDX: 0000000000040000 RSI: 00007f03f98ba000 RDI: 0000000000000003 RBP: 00007fff3c52bd50 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 00007f03f9b9a380 R10: 0000000000000022 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000040000 R13: 00007f03f98ba000 R14: 0000000000000003 R15: 0000000000000000 </TASK> The reason is simple, readahead brought some order 0 folio in swap cache, and the swapin mTHP folio being allocated is in conflict with it, so swapcache_prepare fails and causes shmem_swap_alloc_folio to return -EEXIST, and shmem simply retries again and again causing this loop. Fix it by applying a similar fix for anon mTHP swapin. The performance change is very slight, time of swapin 10g zero folios with shmem (test for 12 times): Before: 2.47s After: 2.48s [kasong@tencent.com: add comment]
Title mm/shmem, swap: fix softlockup with mTHP swapin
References

Subscriptions

Linux Linux Kernel
cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: Linux

Published:

Updated: 2026-05-11T21:23:58.127Z

Reserved: 2025-04-16T04:51:23.996Z

Link: CVE-2025-38241

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Analyzed

Published: 2025-07-09T11:15:26.107

Modified: 2025-11-19T15:51:58.030

Link: CVE-2025-38241

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Moderate

Publid Date: 2025-07-09T00:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2025-38241 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2025-07-13T21:08:06Z

Weaknesses