PT-2026-37428 · Linux · Linux

Published

2026-05-06

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Updated

2026-05-06

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CVE-2026-43118

None

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In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
btrfs: fix zero size inode with non-zero size after log replay
When logging that an inode exists, as part of logging a new name or logging new dir entries for a directory, we always set the generation of the logged inode item to 0. This is to signal during log replay (in overwrite item()), that we should not set the i size since we only logged that an inode exists, so the i size of the inode in the subvolume tree must be preserved (as when we log new names or that an inode exists, we don't log extents).
This works fine except when we have already logged an inode in full mode or it's the first time we are logging an inode created in a past transaction, that inode has a new i size of 0 and then we log a new name for the inode (due to a new hardlink or a rename), in which case we log an i size of 0 for the inode and a generation of 0, which causes the log replay code to not update the inode's i size to 0 (in overwrite item()).
An example scenario:
mkdir /mnt/dir xfs io -f -c "pwrite 0 64K" /mnt/dir/foo
sync
xfs io -c "truncate 0" -c "fsync" /mnt/dir/foo
ln /mnt/dir/foo /mnt/dir/bar
xfs io -c "fsync" /mnt/dir
After log replay the file remains with a size of 64K. This is because when we first log the inode, when we fsync file foo, we log its current i size of 0, and then when we create a hard link we log again the inode in exists mode (LOG INODE EXISTS) but we set a generation of 0 for the inode item we add to the log tree, so during log replay overwrite item() sees that the generation is 0 and i size is 0 so we skip updating the inode's i size from 64K to 0.
Fix this by making sure at fill inode item() we always log the real generation of the inode if it was logged in the current transaction with the i size we logged before. Also if an inode created in a previous transaction is logged in exists mode only, make sure we log the i size stored in the inode item located from the commit root, so that if we log multiple times that the inode exists we get the correct i size.
A test case for fstests will follow soon.

Related Identifiers

CVE-2026-43118

Affected Products

Linux