In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cgroup/cpuset: Make nr_deadline_tasks an atomic_t The nr_deadline_tasks variable in the cpuset structure was introduced by commit 6c24849f5515 ("sched/cpuset: Keep tra…

Overview

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

cgroup/cpuset: Make nr_deadline_tasks an atomic_t

The nr_deadline_tasks variable in the cpuset structure was introduced by commit 6c24849f5515 ("sched/cpuset: Keep track of SCHED_DEADLINE task in cpusets"). It is reported by sashiko [1] that nr_deadline_tasks can currently be modified by inc_dl_tasks_cs() under rq->lock and by cpuset_attach() under cpuset_mutex. So if both updates happen simultaneously, the nr_deadline_tasks variable can be corrupted leading to incorrect operations down the road.

Fix that by changing its type to atomic_t so that nr_deadline_tasks are always atomically updated. This fix patch is a low hanging fruit. It can handle some of the races between a concurrent sched_setscheduler() and cpuset_can_attach()/cpuset_attach() calls, but not all of them like the other issue raised by sashiko [2]. This will be handled hopefully in a future follow up patch.

[1] https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260626181923.133658-1-longman%40redhat.com [2] https://sashiko.dev/#/patchset/20260630033344.352702-1-longman%40redhat.com

Remediation

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