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authorPaul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>2023-11-01 18:28:38 -0700
committerNeeraj Upadhyay (AMD) <neeraj.iitr10@gmail.com>2023-12-12 02:31:22 +0530
commit4e58aaeebb3c27993c734c99eae6881b196b1ddb (patch)
treea3d94fb2b8dd013fa8fc3415026c59511874a12d /Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
parent98b1cc82c4affc16f5598d4fa14b1858671b2263 (diff)
rcu: Restrict access to RCU CPU stall notifiers
Although the RCU CPU stall notifiers can be useful for dumping state when tracking down delicate forward-progress bugs where NUMA effects cause cache lines to be delivered to a given CPU regularly, but always in a state that prevents that CPU from making forward progress. These bugs can be detected by the RCU CPU stall-warning mechanism, but in some cases, the stall-warnings printk()s disrupt the forward-progress bug before any useful state can be obtained. Unfortunately, the notifier mechanism added by commit 5b404fdabacf ("rcu: Add RCU CPU stall notifier") can make matters worse if used at all carelessly. For example, if the stall warning was caused by a lock not being released, then any attempt to acquire that lock in the notifier will hang. This will prevent not only the notifier from producing any useful output, but it will also prevent the stall-warning message from ever appearing. This commit therefore hides this new RCU CPU stall notifier mechanism under a new RCU_CPU_STALL_NOTIFIER Kconfig option that depends on both DEBUG_KERNEL and RCU_EXPERT. In addition, the rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_notifiers=1 kernel boot parameter must also be specified. The RCU_CPU_STALL_NOTIFIER Kconfig option's help text contains a warning and explains the dangers of careless use, recommending lockless notifier code. In addition, a WARN() is triggered each time that an attempt is made to register a stall-warning notifier in kernels built with CONFIG_RCU_CPU_STALL_NOTIFIER=y. This combination of measures will keep use of this mechanism confined to debug kernels and away from routine deployments. [ paulmck: Apply Dan Carpenter feedback. ] Fixes: 5b404fdabacf ("rcu: Add RCU CPU stall notifier") Reported-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Joel Fernandes (Google) <joel@joelfernandes.org> Signed-off-by: Neeraj Upadhyay (AMD) <neeraj.iitr10@gmail.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt6
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
index 65731b060e3f..b72e2049c487 100644
--- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -5302,6 +5302,12 @@
Dump ftrace buffer after reporting RCU CPU
stall warning.
+ rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_notifiers= [KNL]
+ Provide RCU CPU stall notifiers, but see the
+ warnings in the RCU_CPU_STALL_NOTIFIER Kconfig
+ option's help text. TL;DR: You almost certainly
+ do not want rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_notifiers.
+
rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_suppress= [KNL]
Suppress RCU CPU stall warning messages.