CVE-2026-97979

About vulnerability

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

ice: add missing xa_destroy for sched_node_ids

Commit 16dfa49406bc (“ice: Introduce new parameters in ice_sched_node”) added a sched_node_ids xarray to the port info structure, but never called xa_destroy on it.

Since xarrays can allocate internal memory, this can result in a memory leak even if every element in the xarray has been removed.

The xarray is currently embedded in the port_info structure. This appears to have been done because its use is within functions that take the port_info as a primary argument.

However, this complicates managing the lifecycle of the field. The port_info structure is allocated in ice_init_hw() using devm, and it is not released until the devm cleanup when the driver is unloaded.

The ice_init_hw() function is called in many places, including devlink reload, and possibly during DDP load after updating the Tx scheduler layout.

Adding a call of xa_destroy to the ice_deinit_hw() causes Sashiko to raise multiple concerns due to potential ordering issues and possible ways that port_info could be a dangling reference.

To handle this, move the sched_node_ids out of port_info and into the hw structure. All users of the array already have a pointer to hw anyways, and there is only one sched_node_ids per adapter. While here, remove the overly verbose comment explaining the nature of the sched_node_ids xarray.

Add the missing xa_destroy to the cleanup path and to ice_deinit_hw(), ensuring that we properly release the xarray memory.

This was caught by Sashiko during development of unrelated code.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , TuxCare 9.6 ESU , TuxCare 9.8 ESU

Affected packages:

kernel @ 5.14.0 (+2 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.