# CVE-2026-89647

## Summary

- **CVE ID:** CVE-2026-89647
- **Severity:** HIGH
- **CVSS Score:** 7.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
- **CWE:** N/A
- **Published:** Sep 11, 2026
- **Last Modified:** Sep 13, 2026

## 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---

## Affected Products

- Linux — Linux (37c4efc1ddf98ba8b234d116d863a9464445901e)
- Linux — Linux (5.1)
- Linux — Linux (0)
- Linux — Linux (6.12.109)
- Linux — Linux (6.18.50)
- Linux — Linux (7.2.4)
- Linux — Linux (7.3-rc1)

## References

- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5a541eb401acb89d791da41189d7a79220164b93)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/37d6edb2f03b29399a3a337fae78674de51e1695)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d122b2feb1dd76bb5041bdea5e1e1b007d8d415)
- [CNA](https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e7d7aa7b730178278109c41fa1b17b06873065d5)

## Exploitation Prediction (EPSS)

- **EPSS Score:** 0.63%
- **EPSS Percentile:** 48.6

---
_Exported from OnDuty AI Vulnerability Intelligence on 2026-09-18._