Technology media Phoronix reported a bug that caused the Linux kernel to crash. The trigger was a bit unexpected - unplugging a Logitech USB receiver .
That’s right, it’s the thing below↓
According to reports, before today's release of Linux 6.6-rc6, as part of the HID subsystem fix, a rather embarrassing bug was mentioned:
For the past few months, unplugging a Logitech USB receiver has been causing the Linux kernel to crash.
There have been numerous bug reports surrounding this issue, ranging from unplugging Logitech keyboard/mouse receivers to turning off the USB switch of connected devices. The current Linux 6.6-rc6 kernel has been fixed and marked for backporting to existing stable Linux kernels.
Red Hat engineer Hans de Goede continues to work wonders fixing and improving Linux desktop/laptop hardware support. He was responsible for resolving a bug that caused the Logitech USB receiver to be disconnected.
The patch submitted by Hans de Goede stated that there are four check time and use time race conditions ( time-of-check vs. time-of-use races ) that need to be resolved.
Prior to this, Red Hat released a series of different bug reports this summer: USB disconnect causing kernel crash, power_supply_uevent on USB causing page_fault_oops, kernel module hid_logitech_dj causing crash and USB corruption, and Logitech unified receiver not working properly etc.
The fix has been merged into today's release of Linux 6.6-rc6 and will be backported to the Linux stable series in the coming days.
By the way, if you are using the latest Linux kernel version, do not unplug the Logitech USB receiver to avoid kernel panic.