In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
sched/fair: Don't balance task to its current running CPU
We've run into the case that the balancer tries to balance a migration
disabled task and trigger the warning in set_task_cpu() like below:
------------[ cut here ]------------
WARNING: CPU: 7 PID: 0 at kernel/sched/core.c:3115 set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
Modules linked in: hclgevf xt_CHECKSUM ipt_REJECT nf_reject_ipv4 <...snip>
CPU: 7 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/7 Kdump: loaded Tainted: G O 6.1.0-rc4+ #1
Hardware name: Huawei TaiShan 2280 V2/BC82AMDC, BIOS 2280-V2 CS V5.B221.01 12/09/2021
pstate: 604000c9 (nZCv daIF +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
pc : set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
lr : load_balance+0x5d0/0xc60
sp : ffff80000803bc70
x29: ffff80000803bc70 x28: ffff004089e190e8 x27: ffff004089e19040
x26: ffff007effcabc38 x25: 0000000000000000 x24: 0000000000000001
x23: ffff80000803be84 x22: 000000000000000c x21: ffffb093e79e2a78
x20: 000000000000000c x19: ffff004089e19040 x18: 0000000000000000
x17: 0000000000001fad x16: 0000000000000030 x15: 0000000000000000
x14: 0000000000000003 x13: 0000000000000000 x12: 0000000000000000
x11: 0000000000000001 x10: 0000000000000400 x9 : ffffb093e4cee530
x8 : 00000000fffffffe x7 : 0000000000ce168a x6 : 000000000000013e
x5 : 00000000ffffffe1 x4 : 0000000000000001 x3 : 0000000000000b2a
x2 : 0000000000000b2a x1 : ffffb093e6d6c510 x0 : 0000000000000001
Call trace:
set_task_cpu+0x188/0x240
load_balance+0x5d0/0xc60
rebalance_domains+0x26c/0x380
_nohz_idle_balance.isra.0+0x1e0/0x370
run_rebalance_domains+0x6c/0x80
__do_softirq+0x128/0x3d8
____do_softirq+0x18/0x24
call_on_irq_stack+0x2c/0x38
do_softirq_own_stack+0x24/0x3c
__irq_exit_rcu+0xcc/0xf4
irq_exit_rcu+0x18/0x24
el1_interrupt+0x4c/0xe4
el1h_64_irq_handler+0x18/0x2c
el1h_64_irq+0x74/0x78
arch_cpu_idle+0x18/0x4c
default_idle_call+0x58/0x194
do_idle+0x244/0x2b0
cpu_startup_entry+0x30/0x3c
secondary_start_kernel+0x14c/0x190
__secondary_switched+0xb0/0xb4
---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
Further investigation shows that the warning is superfluous, the migration
disabled task is just going to be migrated to its current running CPU.
This is because that on load balance if the dst_cpu is not allowed by the
task, we'll re-select a new_dst_cpu as a candidate. If no task can be
balanced to dst_cpu we'll try to balance the task to the new_dst_cpu
instead. In this case when the migration disabled task is not on CPU it
only allows to run on its current CPU, load balance will select its
current CPU as new_dst_cpu and later triggers the warning above.
The new_dst_cpu is chosen from the env->dst_grpmask. Currently it
contains CPUs in sched_group_span() and if we have overlapped groups it's
possible to run into this case. This patch makes env->dst_grpmask of
group_balance_mask() which exclude any CPUs from the busiest group and
solve the issue. For balancing in a domain with no overlapped groups
the behaviour keeps same as before.
Publication date: Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:21:00 +0000