Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 23 Jul 2015 10:40:48 -0700 | Subject | Re: [PATCH] x86/panic/reboot: Flush processor caches during panic/reboot | From | Dan Williams <> |
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On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@hp.com> wrote: > During power failure, Asynchronous DRAM Refresh (ADR) flushes > the write buffer in memory controllers into NVDIMM, but does not > flush processor caches. While the kernel and application code > need to take care of processor cache flush, they may not be able > to do so during panic or reboot. > > Add processor cache flush (wbinvd) to the stop-CPUs interfaces, > native_stop_other_cpus() and nmi_shootdown_cpus(), which are > called during panic and reboot as follows. These wbinvd()s are > called on each CPU after its irq/APIC is disabled. > > - panic() > + smp_send_stop() > o native_stop_other_cpus() > o stop_this_cpu() > > - native_machine_restart() > - native_machine_halt() > - native_machine_power_off() > + native_machine_shutdown() > + stop_other_cpus() > o native_stop_other_cpus() > o stop_this_cpu() > > - native_machine_crash_shutdown() > + kdump_nmi_shootdown_cpus() > o nmi_shootdown_cpus() > o crash_nmi_callback() > > Note, the cpu offline path, mwait_play_dead(), already calls > wbinvd(). >
If the application is already prepared for surprise power loss what additional benefit is there to flushing caches on panic? In other words, if the application needs this for correctness then it is broken with respect to surprise power loss, otherwise these flushes are not necessary.
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