CVE-2026-31667

About vulnerability

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

Input: uinput - fix circular locking dependency with ff-core

A lockdep circular locking dependency warning can be triggered reproducibly when using a force-feedback gamepad with uinput (for example, playing ELDEN RING under Wine with a Flydigi Vader 5 controller):

ff->mutex -> udev->mutex -> input_mutex -> dev->mutex -> ff->mutex

The cycle is caused by four lock acquisition paths:

1. ff upload: input_ff_upload() holds ff->mutex and calls uinput_dev_upload_effect() -> uinput_request_submit() -> uinput_request_send(), which acquires udev->mutex.

2. device create: uinput_ioctl_handler() holds udev->mutex and calls uinput_create_device() -> input_register_device(), which acquires input_mutex.

3. device register: input_register_device() holds input_mutex and calls kbd_connect() -> input_register_handle(), which acquires dev->mutex.

4. evdev release: evdev_release() calls input_flush_device() under dev->mutex, which calls input_ff_flush() acquiring ff->mutex.

Fix this by introducing a new state_lock spinlock to protect udev->state and udev->dev access in uinput_request_send() instead of acquiring udev->mutex. The function only needs to atomically check device state and queue an input event into the ring buffer via uinput_dev_event() – both operations are safe under a spinlock (ktime_get_ts64() and wake_up_interruptible() do not sleep). This breaks the ff->mutex -> udev->mutex link since a spinlock is a leaf in the lock ordering and cannot form cycles with mutexes.

To keep state transitions visible to uinput_request_send(), protect writes to udev->state in uinput_create_device() and uinput_destroy_device() with the same state_lock spinlock.

Additionally, move init_completion(&request->done) from uinput_request_send() to uinput_request_submit() before uinput_request_reserve_slot(). Once the slot is allocated, uinput_flush_requests() may call complete() on it at any time from the destroy path, so the completion must be initialised before the request becomes visible.

Lock ordering after the fix:

ff->mutex -> state_lock (spinlock, leaf) udev->mutex -> state_lock (spinlock, leaf) udev->mutex -> input_mutex -> dev->mutex -> ff->mutex (no back-edge)

Affected product:

Ubuntu 20.04 ELS

Affected packages:

linux-meta @ 5.4.0

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.