The circular buffer is NULLified in uart_tty_port_shutdown() under the spin lock. However, the PM or other timer based callbacks may still trigger after this event without knowning that buffer pointer is not valid. Since the serial code is a bit inconsistent in checking the buffer state (some rely on the head-tail positions, some on the buffer pointer), it's better to have both aligned, i.e. buffer pointer to be NULL and head-tail possitions to be the same, meaning it's empty. This will prevent asynchronous calls to dereference NULL pointer as reported recently in 8250 case: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000cf5 Workqueue: pm pm_runtime_work EIP: serial8250_tx_chars (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1809) ... ? serial8250_tx_chars (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1809) __start_tx (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1551) serial8250_start_tx (drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c:1654) serial_port_runtime_suspend (include/linux/serial_core.h:667 drivers/tty/serial/serial_port.c:63) __rpm_callback (drivers/base/power/runtime.c:393) ? serial_port_remove (drivers/tty/serial/serial_port.c:50) rpm_suspend (drivers/base/power/runtime.c:447) The proposed change will prevent ->start_tx() to be called during suspend on shut down port. Fixes: 43066e32227e ("serial: port: Don't suspend if the port is still busy") Reported-by: kernel test robot <oliver.sang@xxxxxxxxx> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/oe-lkp/202404031607.2e92eebe-lkp@xxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Andy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- I have got into the very similar issue while working on max3100 driver. I haven't checked the 8250 case, but for mine the culprit is the same and this patch fixes it. Hence I assume it will fix the 8250 case as well. drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c b/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c index a005fc06a077..ba3a674a8bbf 100644 --- a/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/serial_core.c @@ -1788,6 +1788,7 @@ static void uart_tty_port_shutdown(struct tty_port *port) * Free the transmit buffer. */ uart_port_lock_irq(uport); + uart_circ_clear(&state->xmit); buf = state->xmit.buf; state->xmit.buf = NULL; uart_port_unlock_irq(uport); -- 2.43.0.rc1.1.gbec44491f096