CVE-2026-52980 — sched/fair: Clear rel_deadline when initializing forked entities

Affected: Linux

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…

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CVE-2026-52980 — sched/fair: Clear rel_deadline when initializing forked entities