Linux Kernel Daily: Critical Filesystem and Memory Fixes
Linus Torvalds merged multiple fixes for version 7.1, addressing crashes in HPFS filesystem corruption handling, memory allocation issues in device mapper VDO, and buffer leaks in bootconfig tools.
Duration: PT1M46S
Transcript
Good morning, I'm your host with Linux Kernel Daily for May 26th, 2026.
Today we're covering four commits focused entirely on critical bug fixes as the 7.1 release cycle continues. Linus Torvalds handled three merge commits pulling in targeted fixes from maintainer trees.
The first merge addresses a crash vulnerability in the HPFS filesystem. Mikulas Patocka's fix resolves a serious issue where encountering corrupted filesystem data could trigger kernel crashes due to uninitialized buffer handling in the dnode bitmap mapping function. This fix is marked for stable backporting.
The second merge tackles memory allocation problems in the device mapper VDO subsystem. The fix changes allocation flags from GFP_NOWAIT to GFP_NOIO during the format path to prevent crashes when memory allocation fails during block device zero-out operations.
The third merge brings in a bootconfig tooling fix from Masami Hiramatsu's tracing tree. This resolves buffer leaks in the apply_xbc function, addressing a memory management issue in the bootconfig utilities.
The final commit is Mikulas Patocka's direct HPFS fix, which appears to be the same patch that was merged in the first commit. This addresses the crash scenario where hpfs_map_dnode_bitmap failure would lead to operations on uninitialized quad buffer heads, reported by Farhad Alemi from UC Berkeley.
What's next: These stability fixes suggest we're in the later stages of the 7.1 release candidate cycle, with focus shifting to critical bug resolution. Additional filesystem and driver stability patches may follow as testing continues.
That's your Linux Kernel Daily briefing. I'm your host, and we'll see you tomorrow.