Executive brief
A memory leak was identified in the Linux kernel's powerpc architecture, specifically affecting systems using the XIVE interrupt controller. This issue occurs when certain hardware components, like NVMe storage drives, request interrupt resources that are later not properly cleaned up by the system. Over time, this could lead to a gradual depletion of available system memory, potentially impacting performance or stability.
Technical details
A memory leak exists in the Linux kernel's powerpc XIVE implementation due to an incorrect chip_data lookup in the xive_irq_free_data() function. When MSI-X vectors are allocated for devices (such as NVMe), the XIVE code stores interrupt data in the parent domain's chip_data. However, a previous architectural change caused the cleanup routine to attempt to retrieve this data from the child domain instead. Because the lookup fails, the allocated 'xive_irq_data' structure is never freed when the interrupt domain is destroyed. The fix involves explicitly retrieving the irq_data from the correct parent domain using irq_domain_get_irq_data() before attempting to free the associated chip_data.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel powerpc architecture with XIVE interrupt controller
Timeline
- 2026-05-28: advisory: NVD publication date
- 2026-05-14: patched: Fix committed to stable kernel trees