CVE-2026-45968 — cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available

On certain platforms (PowerNV systems without a power-mgt DT node), cpuidle may register only a single idle state. In cases where that single state is a polling state (state 0), the ladder governor may incorrectly treat state 1 as the first usable state and pass an out-of-bounds index. This can lead to a NULL enter callback being invoked, ultimately resulting in a system crash.

[ 13.342636] cpuidle-powernv : Only Snooze is available [ 13.351854] Faulting instruction address: 0x00000000 [ 13.376489] NIP [0000000000000000] 0x0 [ 13.378351] LR [c000000001e01974] cpuidle_enter_state+0x2c4/0x668

Fix this by adding a bail-out in cpuidle_select() that returns state 0 directly when state_count <= 1, bypassing the governor and keeping the tick running.

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CVE-2026-45968 — cpuidle: Skip governor when only one idle state is available