CVE-2026-52980

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

sched/fair: Clear rel_deadline when initializing forked entities

A yield-triggered crash can happen when a newly forked sched_entity enters the fair class with se->rel_deadline unexpectedly set.

The failing sequence is:

1. A task is forked while se->rel_deadline is still set.
2. __sched_fork() initializes vruntime, vlag and other sched_entity state, but does not clear rel_deadline.
3. On the first enqueue, enqueue_entity() calls place_entity().
4. Because se->rel_deadline is set, place_entity() treats se->deadline as a relative deadline and converts it to an absolute deadline by adding the current vruntime.
5. However, the forked entitys deadline is not a valid inherited relative deadline for this new scheduling instance, so the conversion produces an abnormally large deadline.
6. If the task later calls sched_yield(), yield_task_fair() advances se->vruntime to se->deadline.
7. The inflated vruntime is then used by the following enqueue path, where the vruntime-derived key can overflow when multiplied by the entity weight.
8. This corrupts cfs_rq->sum_w_vruntime, breaks EEVDF eligibility calculation, and can eventually make all entities appear ineligible. pick_next_entity() may then return NULL unexpectedly, leading to a later NULL dereference.

A captured trace shows the effect clearly. Before yield, the entitys vruntime was around:

9834017729983308

After yield_task_fair() executed:

se->vruntime = se->deadline

the vruntime jumped to:

19668035460670230

and the deadline was later advanced further to:

19668035463470230

This shows that the deadline had already become abnormally large before yield_task_fair() copied it into vruntime.

rel_deadline is only meaningful when se->deadline really carries a relative deadline that still needs to be placed against vruntime. A freshly forked sched_entity should not inherit or retain this state. Clear se->rel_deadline in __sched_fork(), together with the other sched_entity runtime state, so that the first enqueue does not interpret the new entitys deadline as a stale relative deadline.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3da56dc063cd77b9c0b40add930767fab4e389f3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8f4a16200785f49cf02c5b71bdfe7a9dab63f23a
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c71bf35caba12bfd9bc23e32b0bcd9e02d1cf1ac
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f3c16e1f4a314a20717ab90a41885f8111a242ab