CVE-2026-89517In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
sched_ext: Fix rq->core_pick corruption under core scheduling
Core scheduling's pick_next_task() picks what to run on every SMT sibling of
the core in a single pass under the shared core-wide rq lock. The selection
state is consistent only while the lock is held continuously, so
->pick_task() originally could not release it. However, since 4c95380701f5
("sched/ext: Fold balance_scx() into pick_task_scx()"), sched_ext runs
dispatch from inside the pick and dispatching can drop the rq lock. To
support this, pick_next_task() has been updated to restart the whole
selection when a pick returns RETRY_TASK after releasing the lock.
When selections on the same core interleave through the dropped lock, they
corrupt each other's state: one clears the other's rq->core_pick leading to
a NULL deref, or invalidates its keep-the-previous-task decision leaving a
dequeued task running, which deadlocks the next wakeup and matches the
reported hard hangs. A cookied ping-pong load on an SMT machine makes the
interleavings frequent and kills the kernel within seconds.
Fix it by making the pick return RETRY_TASK whenever dispatch released the
rq lock, so that a selection only ever commits picks made under a
continuously held lock. The previous patch's rq->scx.lock_drop_seq counts
the releases. A dispatch that touched nothing never releases the lock and
its verdict, including "nothing to run", stands: retries are bounded, each
following a dispatch that actually did something, and an idle CPU does not
loop.
If another dispatch is already in flight on the rq, skip dispatching and
pick from what is already queued locally - the in-flight dispatch has
released the lock, so its own selection will retry and re-pick this rq,
while returning RETRY_TASK here would only spin on the lock that dispatch
needs to finish.
Balance callbacks must run in the context that queued them, so they can only
be queued on the CPU's own rq. When dispatching for another rq, run the
deferred work directly instead - that rq may consume all its picks through
the core-sched fast path and never queue the callback itself.
The put_prev_task_scx() warning about a runnable task being left behind
assumed that dispatch ran as part of the very pick that is switching away.
That now only holds on the non-core path, so gate it and drop the
cookie-match test, which is always true without core scheduling, from its
condition.