UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39844
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h During our internal testing, we started observing intermittent boot failures when the machine uses 4-level paging and has a large amount of persistent memory: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffe70000000034 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI RIP: 0010:__init_single_page+0x9/0x6d Call Trace: <TASK> __init_zone_device_page+0x17/0x5d memmap_init_zone_device+0x154/0x1bb pagemap_range+0x2e0/0x40f memremap_pages+0x10b/0x2f0 devm_memremap_pages+0x1e/0x60 dev_dax_probe+0xce/0x2ec [device_dax] dax_bus_probe+0x6d/0xc9 [... snip ...] </TASK> It turns out that the kernel panics while initializing vmemmap (struct page array) when the vmemmap region spans two PGD entries, because the new PGD entry is only installed in init_mm.pgd, but not in the page tables of other tasks. And looking at __populate_section_memmap(): if (vmemmap_can_optimize(altmap, pgmap)) // does not sync top level page tables r = vmemmap_populate_compound_pages(pfn, start, end, nid, pgmap); else // sync top level page tables in x86 r = vmemmap_populate(start, end, nid, altmap); In the normal path, vmemmap_populate() in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c synchronizes the top level page table (See commit 9b861528a801 ("x86-64, mem: Update all PGDs for direct mapping and vmemmap mapping changes")) so that all tasks in the system can see the new vmemmap area. However, when vmemmap_can_optimize() returns true, the optimized path skips synchronization of top-level page tables. This is because vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() is implemented in core MM code, which does not handle synchronization of the top-level page tables. Instead, the core MM has historically relied on each architecture to perform this synchronization manually. We're not the first party to encounter a crash caused by not-sync'd top level page tables: earlier this year, Gwan-gyeong Mun attempted to address the issue [1] [2] after hitting a kernel panic when x86 code accessed the vmemmap area before the corresponding top-level entries were synced. At that time, the issue was believed to be triggered only when struct page was enlarged for debugging purposes, and the patch did not get further updates. It turns out that current approach of relying on each arch to handle the page table sync manually is fragile because 1) it's easy to forget to sync the top level page table, and 2) it's also easy to overlook that the kernel should not access the vmemmap and direct mapping areas before the sync. # The solution: Make page table sync more code robust and harder to miss To address this, Dave Hansen suggested [3] [4] introducing {pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel() for updating kernel portion of the page tables and allow each architecture to explicitly perform synchronization when installing top-level entries. With this approach, we no longer need to worry about missing the sync step, reducing the risk of future regressions. The new interface reuses existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK, PGTBL_P*D_MODIFIED and arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility used by vmalloc and ioremap to synchronize page tables. pgd_populate_kernel() looks like this: static inline void pgd_populate_kernel(unsigned long addr, pgd_t *pgd, p4d_t *p4d) { pgd_populate(&init_mm, pgd, p4d); if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PGD_MODIFIED) arch_sync_kernel_mappings(addr, addr); } It is worth noting that vmalloc() and apply_to_range() carefully synchronizes page tables by calling p*d_alloc_track() and arch_sync_kernel_mappings(), and thus they are not affected by ---truncated---
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
11 explicit affected versions
75 explicit affected versions
50 explicit affected versions
6 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
19 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
6 explicit affected versions
85 explicit affected versions
24 explicit affected versions
70 explicit affected versions
70 explicit affected versions
76 explicit affected versions
65 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
30 explicit affected versions
26 explicit affected versions
77 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
74 explicit affected versions
34 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
37 explicit affected versions
35 explicit affected versions
37 explicit affected versions
35 explicit affected versions
18 explicit affected versions
32 explicit affected versions
64 explicit affected versions
39 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
4 explicit affected versions
23 explicit affected versions
45 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
21 explicit affected versions
9 explicit affected versions
16 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
41 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
14 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
9 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
34 explicit affected versions
31 explicit affected versions
16 explicit affected versions
23 explicit affected versions
27 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
37 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
33 explicit affected versions
3 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
52 explicit affected versions
26 explicit affected versions
5 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
24 explicit affected versions
29 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
82 explicit affected versions
34 explicit affected versions
34 explicit affected versions
77 explicit affected versions
40 explicit affected versions
33 explicit affected versions
23 explicit affected versions
46 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
5 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
5 explicit affected versions
62 explicit affected versions
78 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
26 explicit affected versions
32 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
54 explicit affected versions
28 explicit affected versions
40 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
39 explicit affected versions
16 explicit affected versions
76 explicit affected versions
43 explicit affected versions
3 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
2 explicit affected versions
51 explicit affected versions
18 explicit affected versions
35 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
64 explicit affected versions
65 explicit affected versions
27 explicit affected versions
51 explicit affected versions
36 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
42 explicit affected versions
5 explicit affected versions
3 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
39 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
9 explicit affected versions
25 explicit affected versions
44 explicit affected versions
16 explicit affected versions
3 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
26 explicit affected versions
45 explicit affected versions
37 explicit affected versions
44 explicit affected versions
14 explicit affected versions
38 explicit affected versions
9 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
32 explicit affected versions
15 explicit affected versions
78 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
7 explicit affected versions
4 explicit affected versions
67 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
76 explicit affected versions
67 explicit affected versions
66 explicit affected versions
13 explicit affected versions
43 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
8 explicit affected versions
38 explicit affected versions
14 explicit affected versions
4 explicit affected versions
78 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
1 explicit affected versions
12 explicit affected versions
32 explicit affected versions
66 explicit affected versions
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: move page table sync declarations to linux/pgtable.h During our internal testing, we started observing intermittent boot failures when the machine uses 4-level paging and has a large amount of persistent memory: BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffe70000000034 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI RIP: 0010:__init_single_page+0x9/0x6d Call Trace: <TASK> __init_zone_device_page+0x17/0x5d memmap_init_zone_device+0x154/0x1bb pagemap_range+0x2e0/0x40f memremap_pages+0x10b/0x2f0 devm_memremap_pages+0x1e/0x60 dev_dax_probe+0xce/0x2ec [device_dax] dax_bus_probe+0x6d/0xc9 [... snip ...] </TASK> It turns out that the kernel panics while initializing vmemmap (struct page array) when the vmemmap region spans two PGD entries, because the new PGD entry is only installed in init_mm.pgd, but not in the page tables of other tasks. And looking at __populate_section_memmap(): if (vmemmap_can_optimize(altmap, pgmap)) // does not sync top level page tables r = vmemmap_populate_compound_pages(pfn, start, end, nid, pgmap); else // sync top level page tables in x86 r = vmemmap_populate(start, end, nid, altmap); In the normal path, vmemmap_populate() in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c synchronizes the top level page table (See commit 9b861528a801 ("x86-64, mem: Update all PGDs for direct mapping and vmemmap mapping changes")) so that all tasks in the system can see the new vmemmap area. However, when vmemmap_can_optimize() returns true, the optimized path skips synchronization of top-level page tables. This is because vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() is implemented in core MM code, which does not handle synchronization of the top-level page tables. Instead, the core MM has historically relied on each architecture to perform this synchronization manually. We're not the first party to encounter a crash caused by not-sync'd top level page tables: earlier this year, Gwan-gyeong Mun attempted to address the issue [1] [2] after hitting a kernel panic when x86 code accessed the vmemmap area before the corresponding top-level entries were synced. At that time, the issue was believed to be triggered only when struct page was enlarged for debugging purposes, and the patch did not get further updates. It turns out that current approach of relying on each arch to handle the page table sync manually is fragile because 1) it's easy to forget to sync the top level page table, and 2) it's also easy to overlook that the kernel should not access the vmemmap and direct mapping areas before the sync. # The solution: Make page table sync more code robust and harder to miss To address this, Dave Hansen suggested [3] [4] introducing {pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel() for updating kernel portion of the page tables and allow each architecture to explicitly perform synchronization when installing top-level entries. With this approach, we no longer need to worry about missing the sync step, reducing the risk of future regressions. The new interface reuses existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK, PGTBL_P*D_MODIFIED and arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility used by vmalloc and ioremap to synchronize page tables. pgd_populate_kernel() looks like this: static inline void pgd_populate_kernel(unsigned long addr, pgd_t *pgd, p4d_t *p4d) { pgd_populate(&init_mm, pgd, p4d); if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PGD_MODIFIED) arch_sync_kernel_mappings(addr, addr); } It is worth noting that vmalloc() and apply_to_range() carefully synchronizes page tables by calling p*d_alloc_track() and arch_sync_kernel_mappings(), and thus they are not affected by ---truncated---
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://git.kernel.org/linus/7cc183f2e67d19b03ee5c13a6664b8c6cc37ff9d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/469f9d22751472b81eaaf8a27fcdb5a70741c342
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4f7537772011fad832f83d6848f8eab282545bef
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6797a8b3f71b2cb558b8771a03450dc3e004e453
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/732e62212f49d549c91071b4da7942ee3058f7a2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7cc183f2e67d19b03ee5c13a6664b8c6cc37ff9d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/eceb44e1f94bd641b2a4e8c09b64c797c4eabc15
- https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-39844
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7909-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7909-2
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7909-3
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7909-4
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7909-5
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7910-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7910-2
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7933-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7938-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8095-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8095-2
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8095-3
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8095-4
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8095-5
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8100-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8125-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8126-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8165-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8261-1
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-39844