Linux kernel (drivers/infiniband/hw/hfi1): The node panics when the fabric link goes down while any sender is waiting

Impact

The node panics when the fabric link goes down while any sender is waiting for send credits. A corrupted list move in the freeze path dereferences a bad pointer in a workqueue, so a single link event turns into a whole-node outage for every tenant on that host - and the CNA rates it as giving confidentiality and integrity impact, not just availability.

Who can reach it

Adjacent-network: anyone able to bounce the Omni-Path link reaches it - a port flap, a switch-side action, a peer resetting the port, or a cable event. No credentials on the host are required and no tenant device node is needed; the trigger is the link transition itself while send waiters are queued. Requires hfi1 hardware (Intel Omni-Path), so this matters on HPC-heritage fabric nodes rather than pure Ethernet/RoCE clusters.

What to do

Update to 5.4.224, 5.10.154, 5.15 or later. There is no useful interim control - the trigger is a normal fabric event, so schedule the reboot rather than trying to gate access.

References