CVE-2026-89647 ceph: do not repeat ceph_trim_dentries() if no progress possible
A logic error in the Linux kernel's Ceph client causes a busy loop consuming CPU when no dentries can be reclaimed, leading to denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-89647?
CVE-2026-89647 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 11 Sep 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ceph: do not repeat ceph_trim_dentries() if no progress possible
ceph_cap_reclaim_work() re-queues itself for as long as ceph_trim_dentries() returns -EAGAIN, which happens whenever a lease walk exhausts its `nr_to_scan` budget. This creates a busy loop that consumes CPU without making any progress when there is nothing to reclaim: with no cap pressure (`count==0`) and every scanned lease still valid, each pass runs the full scan budget down to zero and returns `-EAGAIN`, only to be queued again immediately.
The dir-lease walk made this worse. When `expire_dir_lease` is `false` (i.e. we have no intention of reclaiming dir leases), __dir_lease_check() returned `TOUCH` for every valid lease. `TOUCH` moves the dentry to the tail of the list and resets `di->time` via __dentry_dir_lease_touch(), so a walk over N valid leases pointlessly rewrote the list, refreshed the timestamps (preventing them from ever aging out) and always drained `nr_to_scan`, guaranteeing the `-EAGAIN` requeue.
Fix this in three steps:
- Return `KEEP` instead of `TOUCH` when `expire_dir_lease` is `false`. If we are not going to reclaim the lease, leave it in place instead of churning the list and resetting its timestamp; the walk then terminates naturally (or via `STOP` at the first fresh lease).
- Only return `-EAGAIN` from the first (dentry-lease) walk when something was actually freed. A full batch that frees nothing means retrying the same list immediately is futile; fall through to the dir-lease walk instead.
- After both walks, bail out with success (0) when nothing was freed and there is no cap pressure (`count==0`). There is no reason to keep retrying when we are not over the cap limit and made no progress.
Under real cap pressure (`count>0`) the reclaim path is unchanged and still retries via `-EAGAIN`.
Without this patch, I saw 500 ceph_trim_dentries() calls per second on our web servers. This is very visible in `/proc/lock_stat` (5 minute capture):
class name con-bounces contentions waittime-min waittime-max waittime-total waittime-avg acq-bounces acquisitions holdtime-min holdtime-max holdtime-total holdtime-avg
&mdsc->dentry_list_lock: 126180 128218 0.04 8063.44 15986965.20 124.69 1573354 5296812 0.04 8291.28 74164526.48 14.00 ----------------------- &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 111736 [<000000007b11e319>] __ceph_dentry_dir_lease_touch+0x7c/0xa8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 2631 [<0000000050597999>] __dentry_leases_walk+0x64/0x2c8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 3878 [<00000000c0022f62>] __ceph_dentry_lease_touch+0x5c/0xa8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 9973 [<000000002f27cb6f>] __dentry_lease_unlist+0x50/0xa0 ----------------------- &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 123621 [<0000000050597999>] __dentry_leases_walk+0x64/0x2c8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 1822 [<000000007b11e319>] __ceph_dentry_dir_lease_touch+0x7c/0xa8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 2720 [<000000002f27cb6f>] __dentry_lease_unlist+0x50/0xa0 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 55 [<00000000c0022f62>] __ceph_dentry_lease_touch+0x5c/0xa8
With this patch:
class name con-bounces contentions waittime-min waittime-max waittime-total waittime-avg acq-bounces acquisitions holdtime-min holdtime-max holdtime-total holdtime-avg
&mdsc->dentry_list_lock: 1203 1215 0.16 408.88 33082.88 27.23 4320501 7357389 0.04 500.64 1961578.00 0.27 ----------------------- &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 1029 [<000000003c9aea8a>] __ceph_dentry_dir_lease_touch+0x7c/0xa8 &mdsc->dentry_list_lock 1 ---truncated---
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-89647?
How do I fix CVE-2026-89647?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2026-89647 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-89647 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-100238, BELL-CVE-2026-89647, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-89647, GHSA-m843-78wr-m386, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-89647.