CVE-2026-98087
Received
Received - Intake
Linux Kernel RT Scheduler Push Loop Vulnerability
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98087, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-25
Last updated on: 2026-09-25
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
sched/rt,dl: Skip migrate-disabled tasks when picking a push candidate
A migrate_disable()'d RT task cannot be moved to another CPU, but the
scheduler still keeps such a task on that CPU's pushable list
(rq->rt.pushable_tasks) and still marks the runqueue RT-overloaded
(rq->rt.overloaded = 1). So the RT balancer keeps treating this CPU as
having a task to move away, and keeps trying to move the task, but the
push can never succeed. When the head is pinned, push_rt_task() does not
give up either. It falls back to pushing rq->curr instead, using the
per-CPU stopper, as added by commit a7c81556ec4d ("sched: Fix
migrate_disable() vs rt/dl balancing").
The CPU spends tens of milliseconds in this retry loop. The core is
isolated for real-time work, but during the loop nearly half of its time
is consumed by pushes that cannot succeed.
An ftrace capture of the affected CPU, with sched_switch enabled and
commit 94894c9c477e ("sched/rt: Skip currently executing CPU in
rto_next_cpu()") applied, shows where the CPU time went. Two SCHED_FIFO
tasks at equal priority shared the CPU, taskA migrate_disable()'d and
queued, taskB as rq->curr. In one 89 ms window, taskB got only 52 ms of
CPU. The other 37 ms went to the stopper thread.
The scheduler kept trying to push taskA, the pinned head of the pushable
list, fell back to pushing taskB instead, and woke the stopper 5204
times. Every one of those pushes failed and no task was moved. taskA
stayed runnable and queued the whole time, and never ran.
Pushing taskB fails on a re-check. find_lock_lowest_rq() drops the rq
lock to take the target rq lock, then checks again with
"task != pick_next_pushable_task(rq)".
The task being pushed is taskB, but the pick returns taskA, the head of
the pushable list. taskB is rq->curr, and set_next_task_rt() removes the
running task from that list, so taskB can never be the head. The check
expects a candidate taken from the pushable list, but the fallback
pushes rq->curr, which is never on that list. So the check fails every
time.
.--> push-IPI arrives
| |
| v
| pushable head = taskA -> pinned, cannot be pushed
| |
| v
| so push taskB instead -> wake migration/N, a stop-class
| | thread, so it preempts taskB
| v
| re-check compares taskB against the pushable head,
| which is still taskA -> give up
| |
| v
| nothing moved, taskA still queued, rq still overloaded
| |
'----------'
repeats every ~17 us, 5204 times, for 89 ms
The loop cannot stop itself. Every round leaves the runqueue
exactly as it was, so the next push-IPI does the same thing. In
the capture it ended only when taskB went to sleep on its own.
taskA was then picked locally and left the pushable list.
CPU time per task in the window, from sched_switch:
taskB 51.95 ms real work
migration/N 37.18 ms nothing moved
taskA 0.00 ms queued the whole time, never picked
idle 0.01 ms
Counts over the same window:
7667 push-IPIs handled on this CPU
17481 pick_next_pushable_task() returned taskA, still pinned
5204 find_lock_lowest_rq() gave up on the re-check
1 push that actually completed
0 migrations of taskA
The CPU times and the window length come from the standard
sched_switch tracepoint. The counts needed tracepoints added inside
the RT balancer for this investigation.
The self-IPI path is closed by the rto_next_cpu() fix above, and that
part works. But the runqueue is still marked overloaded, because the
pinned task is still advertised as pushable. Other CPUs now send the
push-IPIs during their own RT balancing, and the same loop runs again.
Closing the self-IPI path did not stop a pinn
---truncated---
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
