CVE-2026-98445: xfs: don't let memory failures leak blocks and kill repairs
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
xfs: don't let memory failures leak blocks and kill repairs
LOLLM complains that a memory allocation failure in xrepnewbtaddblocks results in online repair leaking blocks that were previously allocated to write a new btree, but the problem is worse than that -- a limitation of the codebase is that the callers cannot undo the transaction /and/ return the error -- either you undo all changes and commit the transaction, or you error out and the filesystem goes down.
However, the new btree space reservation object isn't that big (~48 bytes). Let's just do a NOFAIL allocation and the problem goes away.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Compensating control
Change xrep_newbt_add_blocks to use a NOFAIL memory allocation for the new btree space reservation, preventing memory allocation failures from leaking blocks and causing filesystem failure.