CVE-2026-68086

mm/khugepaged: write all dirty file folios when collapsing

N/A
Published: August 10, 2026 at 11:51 AM UTC
Updated: August 10, 2026 at 12:28 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorLinux Kernel

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Severity
N/A
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.1%

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/khugepaged: write all dirty file folios when collapsing [There is no upstream commit, as this code was removed by upstream commit 044925f9b565 ("mm: fs: remove filemap_nr_thps*() functions and their users")] As-is, khugepaged and writable-file opening exclude each other. A file cannot be open writeable and have THPs (because the filesystem is not aware of them). khugepaged will never collapse file pages for files that are opened writeable. On an open(O_RDWR/O_WRONLY), the page cache for that particular file is dropped. This is fine because nothing could've been dirtied. However, there is an edge-case: collapse_file() might not be able to coexist with concurrent writers, but it can coexist with dirty folios (from previous writers). Therefore, the following can happen: open(file, O_RDWR) write(file) close(file) madvise(file_mapping, MADV_COLLAPSE, some non-dirty range) open(file, O_RDWR) nr_thps > 0 truncate_inode_pages() /* THPs are cleared out, but so are the dirty folios */ When this edge-case happens, there is data loss, as the dirty folios are fully discarded. Fix it by fully writing back the page cache (and waiting) when collapsing file THPs. Doing so provides the guarantee that no dirty folio will be observed while there are active THPs. To fully ensure this is safe, the invalidate_lock needs to be held while doing the writeout, so that do_dentry_open()'s page cache truncation excludes this write-and-wait. As a side effect, move the nr_thps counter bumping outside the i_pages lock. This is correct since the counter itself is an atomic_t and the producer <-> consumer correctness is provided by a full memory barrier: smp_mb() in collapse_file()/memory barrier implied by full ordering in get_write_access() -> atomic_inc_unless_negative().

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

5.4 ≤ v < 7.1.45.499cb0dbd47a15d395bf3faa78dc122bc5efe3fc0
Vendor states this is fixed in 2dfe9f5c91d0963058f8a5e46e1c2a908382cc46 (fixed)
Vendor states this is fixed in 5.4 (unaffected)
Vendor states this is fixed in 7.1.4 (unaffected)

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.

Quick Info

StatusRECEIVED

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