In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: rtw89: pci: add .shutdown callback to stop rfkill polling on reboot Since the hardware rfkill polling was introduced, arm64 platforms can panic with an asynchron…

Overview

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

wifi: rtw89: pci: add .shutdown callback to stop rfkill polling on reboot

Since the hardware rfkill polling was introduced, arm64 platforms can panic with an asynchronous SError during warm reboot:

SError Interrupt on CPU8, code 0x00000000be000011 -- SError Workqueue: events_power_efficient rfkill_poll [rfkill] rtw89_pci_ops_read8+0x94/0x160 [rtw89_pci] rtw89_core_rfkill_poll+0x50/0x1e0 [rtw89_core] rtw89_ops_rfkill_poll+0x40/0x68 [rtw89_core] ieee80211_rfkill_poll+0x3c/0x70 [mac80211] cfg80211_rfkill_poll+0x40/0x2a0 [cfg80211] rfkill_poll+0x30/0x88 [rfkill] Kernel panic - not syncing: Asynchronous SError Interrupt

On the reboot path the kernel only runs device_shutdown(), which calls each driver's .shutdown callback; .remove is not invoked. The rtw89 PCI driver had no .shutdown callback, so nothing stopped the rfkill polling work while the platform was tearing the PCIe link down. Once the link is gone, the next MMIO read from the poll handler targets a non-responding device and is reported as a fatal asynchronous SError on arm64.

Add rtw89_pci_shutdown(), wired to all rtw89 PCI device drivers, which sets a new RTW89_FLAG_SHUTDOWN flag (mirroring the USB RTW89_FLAG_UNPLUGGED pattern). When the flag is set, rtw89_ops_rfkill_poll() returns early, so no MMIO read is issued to the chip after shutdown begins and the SError no longer occurs.

This does not call the full .remove path from .shutdown, to keep the shutdown handler minimal and avoid running the non-idempotent teardown twice.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.

Vendor advisories

• Red Hat VEX · Low · affected: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · no fix planned: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 · updated 2026-09-14 · vex