Medium [CVE-2026-74731] Skip sub-disable teardown for never-linked sub-schedulers

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched_ext: Skip sub-disable teardown for never-linked sub-schedulers A sub-scheduler enable can fail before scx_link_sched() links the sched into the hierarchy, e.g. when the parent is already being disabled, and cleanup still runs the full scx_sub_disable().

That is racy against root disable: drain_descendants() is the only ordering between a sub's disable-time task walk and root disable's all-task teardown, and an unlinked sub is invisible to it. Root's teardown can thus run between the never-linked sub's drain and its walk, exiting every task to no scheduler.

The walk then trips the membership WARN and re-homes the exited tasks onto the dying hierarchy, a use-after-free. Skip the cgroup ownership reset and the task walk if @sch was never linked, indicated by the empty ->sibling as unlinking only happens later in the same function.

The membership WARN remains valid: a linked sub is always waited on by an ancestor's drain. A race condition can occur during the disabling of a sub-scheduler that was never properly linked into the scheduler hierarchy.

This issue could potentially result in system instability or denial of service. Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H).

Weakness: CWE-364.