Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 4 Jun 2012 10:23:53 -0400 | From | Don Zickus <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH] x86: Avoid intermixing cpu dump_stack output on multi-processor systems |
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On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 05:56:03PM -0500, Russ Anderson wrote: > > I am curious, your NMI handler has locking wrapped around dump_stack, > > shouldn't that serialize the output the way you want it? Why isn't that > > working? > > Yes, you're right, it does. It is working. I'd forgotten that > the community kernel has uv_nmi_lock in uv_handle_nmi. Must > be working too much with distro kernels. :-) But that doesn't > help for all the other code paths than call dump_stack.
Sure, I agree. But not every caller of dump_stack needs to dump for all cpus. I was just trying to avoid the ugly complicated code of cmp_xchange you were requesting.
> > > > > FWIW, "Wait for up to 10 seconds for all CPUs to do the backtrace" on > > > a 4096 cpu system isn't long enough. :-) > > > > Good point. :-) > > > > > > > > > Whereas the lock you are proposing can be called in a mixture of NMI and > > > > IRQ which could cause deadlocks I believe. > > > > > > Since this is a lock just around the dump_stack printk, would > > > checking for forward progress and a timeout to catch any possible > > > deadlock be sufficient? In the unlikely case of a deadlock the > > > lock gets broken and some of the cpu backtraces get intermixed. > > > That is still a huge improvement over the current case where > > > all of the backtraces get intermixed. > > > > I saw your new patch based on Frederick's input. It seems to take care of > > deadlock situations though you run into the starving lock problem that > > ticketed spinlocks solved. Which is why I am curious why moving the > > locking one layer up to the NMI handler (which is where it is currently), > > didn't fix your problem. > > Locking in dump_stack would remove the need for uv_nmi_lock.
I agree. I was just wondering if the added complexities were worth it for the normal case.
If the uv_nmi_lock works, then I feel comfortable that your second patch based on Frederic's suggestion will work too. I just feel uncomfortable with locking on a stack dump that should be reliable. It is one thing to do the locking in only NMI space or only IRQ space, but now we are traversing both. I don't think there will be any deadlocks (based on the else path).
It could just be an overhyped paranoia of mine. But that was my biggest hestitation.
Cheers, Don
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