CVE-2026-64164 btrfs: tracepoints: fix sleep while in atomic context in btrfs_sync_file()

Medium 5.5 Published 19 Jul 2026 Updated 19 Jul 2026

A kernel bug in btrfs tracepoints causes a sleep in atomic context, leading to a system crash when specific tracing is enabled.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2026-64164?

CVE-2026-64164 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 19 Jul 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

btrfs: tracepoints: fix sleep while in atomic context in btrfs_sync_file()

The trace event btrfs_sync_file() is called in an atomic context (all trace events are) and its call to dput(), which is needed due to the call to dget_parent(), can sleep, triggering a kernel splat.

This can be reproduced by enabling the trace event and running btrfs/056 from fstests for example. The splat shown in dmesg is the following:

[53.919] BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at fs/dcache.c:970 [53.947] in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 32773, name: xfs_io [53.988] preempt_count: 2, expected: 0 [53.967] RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 [53.943] Preemption disabled at: [53.944] [<0000000000000000>] 0x0 [54.078] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 32773 Comm: xfs_io Tainted: G W 7.1.0-rc1-btrfs-next-232+ #1 PREEMPT(full) [54.070] Tainted: [W]=WARN [54.071] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.2-0-gea1b7a073390-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 [54.072] Call Trace: [54.074] <TASK> [54.076] dump_stack_lvl+0x56/0x80 [54.079] __might_resched.cold+0xd6/0x10f [54.072] dput.part.0+0x24/0x110 [54.078] trace_event_raw_event_btrfs_sync_file+0x75/0x140 [btrfs] [54.089] btrfs_sync_file+0x1ed/0x530 [btrfs] [54.087] ? __handle_mm_fault+0x8ae/0xed0 [54.089] btrfs_do_write_iter+0x172/0x210 [btrfs] [54.091] vfs_write+0x21f/0x450 [54.094] __x64_sys_pwrite64+0x8d/0xc0 [54.096] ? do_user_addr_fault+0x20c/0x670 [54.099] do_syscall_64+0x60/0xf20 [54.092] ? clear_bhb_loop+0x60/0xb0 [54.094] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

So stop using dget_parent() and dput() and access the parent dentry directly as dentry->d_parent. This is also what ext4 is doing in its equivalent trace event ext4_sync_file_enter().

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-64164?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-64164?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-64164 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-64164 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-64164, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64164, GHSA-w7p5-2w2w-6hjm, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-64164.