Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h During our internal testing, we started observing intermittent boot failures when the machine uses 4-level paging and has a large amount of persistent memory: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffe70000000034 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI RIP: 0010:__init_single_page+0x9/0x6d Call Trace: <TASK> __init_zone_device_page+0x17/0x5d memmap_init_zone_device+0x154/0x1bb pagemap_range+0x2e0/0x40f memremap_pages+0x10b/0x2f0 devm_memremap_pages+0x1e/0x60 dev_dax_probe+0xce/0x2ec [device_dax] dax_bus_probe+0x6d/0xc9 [... snip ...] </TASK> It turns out that the kernel panics while initializing vmemmap (struct page array) when the vmemmap region spans two PGD entries, because the new PGD entry is only installed in init_mm.pgd, but not in the page tables of other tasks. And looking at __populate_section_memmap(): if (vmemmap_can_optimize(altmap, pgmap)) // does not sync top level page tables r = vmemmap_populate_compound_pages(pfn, start, end, nid, pgmap); else // sync top level page tables in x86 r = vmemmap_populate(start, end, nid, altmap); In the normal path, vmemmap_populate() in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c synchronizes the top level page table (See commit 9b861528a801 ("x86-64, mem: Update all PGDs for direct mapping and vmemmap mapping changes")) so that all tasks in the system can see the new vmemmap area. However, when vmemmap_can_optimize() returns true, the optimized path skips synchronization of top-level page tables. This is because vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() is implemented in core MM code, which does not handle synchronization of the top-level page tables. Instead, the core MM has historically relied on each architecture to perform this synchronization manually. We're not the first party to encounter a crash caused by not-sync'd top level page tables: earlier this year, Gwan-gyeong Mun attempted to address the issue [1] [2] after hitting a kernel panic when x86 code accessed the vmemmap area before the corresponding top-level entries were synced. At that time, the issue was believed to be triggered only when struct page was enlarged for debugging purposes, and the patch did not get further updates. It turns out that current approach of relying on each arch to handle the page table sync manually is fragile because 1) it's easy to forget to sync the top level page table, and 2) it's also easy to overlook that the kernel should not access the vmemmap and direct mapping areas before the sync. # The solution: Make page table sync more code robust and harder to miss To address this, Dave Hansen suggested [3] [4] introducing {pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel() for updating kernel portion of the page tables and allow each architecture to explicitly perform synchronization when installing top-level entries. With this approach, we no longer need to worry about missing the sync step, reducing the risk of future regressions. The new interface reuses existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK, PGTBL_P*D_MODIFIED and arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility used by vmalloc and ioremap to synchronize page tables. pgd_populate_kernel() looks like this: static inline void pgd_populate_kernel(unsigned long addr, pgd_t *pgd, p4d_t *p4d) { pgd_populate(&init_mm, pgd, p4d); if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PGD_MODIFIED) arch_sync_kernel_mappings(addr, addr); } It is worth noting that vmalloc() and apply_to_range() carefully synchronizes page tables by calling p*d_alloc_track() and arch_sync_kernel_mappings(), and thus they are not affected by ---truncated---

Affected Products 10

References 8

• cert-portal.siemens.com https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-032379.html
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/469f9d22751472b81eaaf8a27fcdb5a70741c342
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4f7537772011fad832f83d6848f8eab282545bef
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6797a8b3f71b2cb558b8771a03450dc3e004e453
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/732e62212f49d549c91071b4da7942ee3058f7a2
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7cc183f2e67d19b03ee5c13a6664b8c6cc37ff9d
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/eceb44e1f94bd641b2a4e8c09b64c797c4eabc15
  Patch
• lists.debian.org https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html
  Mailing ListThird Party Advisory

Remediation

• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/469f9d22751472b81eaaf8a27fcdb5a70741c342
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4f7537772011fad832f83d6848f8eab282545bef
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6797a8b3f71b2cb558b8771a03450dc3e004e453
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/732e62212f49d549c91071b4da7942ee3058f7a2
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7cc183f2e67d19b03ee5c13a6664b8c6cc37ff9d
  Patch
• git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/eceb44e1f94bd641b2a4e8c09b64c797c4eabc15
  Patch