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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-21942 json

btrfs: zoned: fix extent range end unlock in cow_file_range()

published last yr. modified 10d ago also EUVD-2025-9379

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: zoned: fix extent range end unlock in cow_file_range()

Running generic/751 on the for-next branch often results in a hang like below. They are both stack by locking an extent. This suggests someone forget to unlock an extent.

INFO: task kworker/u128:1:12 blocked for more than 323 seconds. Not tainted 6.13.0-BTRFS-ZNS+ #503 "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. task:kworker/u128:1 state:D stack:0 pid:12 tgid:12 ppid:2 flags:0x00004000 Workqueue: btrfs-fixup btrfs_work_helper [btrfs] Call Trace: <TASK> __schedule+0x534/0xdd0 schedule+0x39/0x140 __lock_extent+0x31b/0x380 [btrfs] ? __pfx_autoremove_wake_function+0x10/0x10 btrfs_writepage_fixup_worker+0xf1/0x3a0 [btrfs] btrfs_work_helper+0xff/0x480 [btrfs] ? lock_release+0x178/0x2c0 process_one_work+0x1ee/0x570 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f worker_thread+0x1d1/0x3b0 ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 kthread+0x10b/0x230 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork+0x30/0x50 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK> INFO: task kworker/u134:0:184 blocked for more than 323 seconds. Not tainted 6.13.0-BTRFS-ZNS+ #503 "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. task:kworker/u134:0 state:D stack:0 pid:184 tgid:184 ppid:2 flags:0x00004000 Workqueue: writeback wb_workfn (flush-btrfs-4) Call Trace: <TASK> __schedule+0x534/0xdd0 schedule+0x39/0x140 __lock_extent+0x31b/0x380 [btrfs] ? __pfx_autoremove_wake_function+0x10/0x10 find_lock_delalloc_range+0xdb/0x260 [btrfs] writepage_delalloc+0x12f/0x500 [btrfs] ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f extent_write_cache_pages+0x232/0x840 [btrfs] btrfs_writepages+0x72/0x130 [btrfs] do_writepages+0xe7/0x260 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f ? lock_acquire+0xd2/0x300 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f ? find_held_lock+0x2b/0x80 ? wbc_attach_and_unlock_inode.part.0+0x102/0x250 ? wbc_attach_and_unlock_inode.part.0+0x102/0x250 __writeback_single_inode+0x5c/0x4b0 writeback_sb_inodes+0x22d/0x550 __writeback_inodes_wb+0x4c/0xe0 wb_writeback+0x2f6/0x3f0 wb_workfn+0x32a/0x510 process_one_work+0x1ee/0x570 ? srso_return_thunk+0x5/0x5f worker_thread+0x1d1/0x3b0 ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 kthread+0x10b/0x230 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork+0x30/0x50 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK>

This happens because we have another success path for the zoned mode. When there is no active zone available, btrfs_reserve_extent() returns -EAGAIN. In this case, we have two reactions.

(1) If the given range is never allocated, we can only wait for someone to finish a zone, so wait on BTRFS_FS_NEED_ZONE_FINISH bit and retry afterward.

(2) Or, if some allocations are already done, we must bail out and let the caller to send IOs for the allocation. This is because these IOs may be necessary to finish a zone.

The commit 06f364284794 ("btrfs: do proper folio cleanup when cow_file_range() failed") moved the unlock code from the inside of the loop to the outside. So, previously, the allocated extents are unlocked just after the allocation and so before returning from the function. However, they are no longer unlocked on the case (2) above. That caused the hang issue.

Fix the issue by modifying the 'end' to the end of the allocated range. Then, we can exit the loop and the same unlock code can properly handle the case.

Patch / fix

Is CVE-2025-21942 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-21942 updated

kernel: btrfs: zoned: fix extent range end unlock in cow_file_range()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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