mm: vmscan: remove deadlock due to throttling failing to make progress
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Local
- Privileges required
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- Denial of service
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · High
- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 4 without a fix
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · NVD. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat. Impact type from CWE-667 and the CVSS impact.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: vmscan: remove deadlock due to throttling failing to make progress A soft lockup bug in kcompactd was reported in a private bugzilla with the following visible in dmesg; watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#33 stuck for 26s! [kcompactd0:479] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#33 stuck for 52s! [kcompactd0:479] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#33 stuck for 78s! [kcompactd0:479] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#33 stuck for 104s! [kcompactd0:479] The machine had 256G of RAM with no swap and an earlier failed allocation indicated that node 0 where kcompactd was run was potentially unreclaimable; Node 0 active_anon:29355112kB inactive_anon:2913528kB active_file:0kB inactive_file:0kB unevictable:64kB isolated(anon):0kB isolated(file):0kB mapped:8kB dirty:0kB writeback:0kB shmem:26780kB shmem_thp: 0kB shmem_pmdmapped: 0kB anon_thp: 23480320kB writeback_tmp:0kB kernel_stack:2272kB pagetables:24500kB all_unreclaimable? yes Vlastimil Babka investigated a crash dump and found that a task migrating pages was trying to drain PCP lists; PID: 52922 TASK: ffff969f820e5000 CPU: 19 COMMAND: "kworker/u128:3" Call Trace: __schedule schedule schedule_timeout wait_for_completion __flush_work __drain_all_pages __alloc_pages_slowpath.constprop.114 __alloc_pages alloc_migration_target migrate_pages migrate_to_node do_migrate_pages cpuset_migrate_mm_workfn process_one_work worker_thread kthread ret_from_fork This failure is specific to CONFIG_PREEMPT=n builds. The root of the problem is that kcompact0 is not rescheduling on a CPU while a task that has isolated a large number of the pages from the LRU is waiting on kcompact0 to reschedule so the pages can be released. While shrink_inactive_list() only loops once around too_many_isolated, reclaim can continue without rescheduling if sc->skipped_deactivate == 1 which could happen if there was no file LRU and the inactive anon list was not low.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 5.16.10, 5.17
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Low. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | Affected | No fix planned: Out of support scope |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | Affected | No fix planned: Out of support scope |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2022-48800
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-cgvj-gwgx-p5f7
References
More Linux Kernel vulnerabilities
- TI-2025-26358 tls: fix handling of zero-length records on the rx_list KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
- TI-2026-38352 netfilter: bridge: make ebt_snat ARP rewrite writable KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
- TI-2013-05264 The (1) get_user and (2) put_user API functions in the Linux kernel before 3.5.5 on the… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
- TI-2022-00125 Integer overflow in kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
- TI-2013-01864 The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
- TI-2021-05514 Heap Out-Of-Bounds Write in Netfilter IP6T_SO_SET_REPLACE KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.3
Sources
- CVE-2022-48800 · CVE Program
- CVE-2022-48800 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-cgvj-gwgx-p5f7 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2022-48800 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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