Kernel Vulnerability in Linux Affecting SMP Operations

CVE-2026-99250

What is CVE-2026-99250?

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel has been identified that affects systems using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). Users have reported that certain SMP systems hang during boot due to missed inter-processor interrupts (IPIs) related to the startup of kthreads for console printing. This issue arises because these kthreads, which are initialized very early in the boot process, asynchronously manage interrupts and can interfere with the SMP setup. To mitigate this problem, delaying the startup of the console printing kthreads until after all architecture initialization calls have completed has proven effective in preventing system hangs during boot.

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