CVE-2026-52980

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

sched/fair: Clear rel_deadline when initializing forked entities

A yield-triggered crash can happen when a newly forked sched_entity
enters the fair class with se->rel_deadline unexpectedly set.

The failing sequence is:

  1. A task is forked while se->rel_deadline is still set.
  2. __sched_fork() initializes vruntime, vlag and other sched_entity
     state, but does not clear rel_deadline.
  3. On the first enqueue, enqueue_entity() calls place_entity().
  4. Because se->rel_deadline is set, place_entity() treats se->deadline
     as a relative deadline and converts it to an absolute deadline by
     adding the current vruntime.
  5. However, the forked entity's deadline is not a valid inherited
     relative deadline for this new scheduling instance, so the conversion
     produces an abnormally large deadline.
  6. If the task later calls sched_yield(), yield_task_fair() advances
     se->vruntime to se->deadline.
  7. The inflated vruntime is then used by the following enqueue path,
     where the vruntime-derived key can overflow when multiplied by the
     entity weight.
  8. This corrupts cfs_rq->sum_w_vruntime, breaks EEVDF eligibility
     calculation, and can eventually make all entities appear ineligible.
     pick_next_entity() may then return NULL unexpectedly, leading to a
     later NULL dereference.

A captured trace shows the effect clearly. Before yield, the entity's
vruntime was around:

  9834017729983308

After yield_task_fair() executed:

  se->vruntime = se->deadline

the vruntime jumped to:

  19668035460670230

and the deadline was later advanced further to:

  19668035463470230

This shows that the deadline had already become abnormally large before
yield_task_fair() copied it into vruntime.

rel_deadline is only meaningful when se->deadline really carries a
relative deadline that still needs to be placed against vruntime. A
freshly forked sched_entity should not inherit or retain this state.
Clear se->rel_deadline in __sched_fork(), together with the other
sched_entity runtime state, so that the first enqueue does not interpret
the new entity's deadline as a stale relative deadline.