linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/2] [GIT PULL] tracing: various bug fixes

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Date:	Wed, 22 Apr 2009 10:17:44 -0700
From:	Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@...p.org>
To:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
CC:	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Glauber de Oliveira Costa <gcosta@...hat.com>,
	Chris Wright <chrisw@...s-sol.org>,
	Rusty Russell <rusty@...tcorp.com.au>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/2] [GIT PULL] tracing: various bug fixes

Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 09:49:14AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
>   
>>
>> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
>>     
>>>> I spent the entire day (and half the night) debugging this. I was fighting 
>>>> a case where the hardirqs_enabled flag in the task struct (lockdep flag) 
>>>> was mysteriously being set and cleared. I stepped through the entire 
>>>> kernel thread fork process (that was an exercise) and could not find 
>>>> anything wrong.
>>>>
>>>> Sometimes it would go away with printk's sometimes it would not. This was 
>>>> driving me crazy, until I noticed that paravirt was enabled.
>>>>
>>>> Turning off paravirtualization here (so far) makes everything run 
>>>> smoothly.
>>>>
>>>> Thus my theory is that there's something fishy with the modifying of the 
>>>> irq enable/disable code when the system detects that it is running on bare 
>>>> hardware.
>>>>
>>>> I'm too tired to look at this more. Ingo supplied a config to play with. 
>>>> You can disable VSMP too and it will still trigger the crash.
>>>>
>>>> -- Steve
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> It's indeed a tricky one. I can reproduce it too, I will
>>> try to manage having an irqsoff trace at this point, hopefully I
>>> could get the source of this irq disabling...
>>>       
>> It doesn't disable interrupts :-/
>>
>> It is the hardirqs_enabled flag in the task struct that mysteriously turns 
>> off and back on. I put in printks when it is off in fork, and the next 
>> printk shows that it turns back on (between the printks!!!).
>>
>> I printed the output of "irqs_disabled()" on each of these printks and 
>> interrupts are always enabled. It is only the hardirqs_enabled flag that 
>> is giving strange outputs.
>>     
>
>
> Oh, weird...
>
>  
>   
>> Do you have CONFIG_PARAVIRT on?  When I disabled it, I have yet to 
>> reproduce the bug. But I've only rebooted a few times. I'm going to 
>> continue to reboot to see if I can trigger it.
>>     
>
>
> Yes it is enabled.
>
>
>
>   
>> I'm thinking that the paravirt alternative code may have clobbered a 
>> register in either the enable or disabling of interrupts. This might cause 
>> a strange value to go into the hardirqs_enabled flag.
>>     
>
>
>
> Ok I will try it without PARAVIRT and tell you if I can reproduce it.
>   

Interesting.  What code is generated for native_irq_enable/disable?

    J
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