linux-kernel - Re: [RFC PATCH v2 05/18] sched: add task flag for preempt IRQ tracking

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Date:	Fri, 29 Apr 2016 15:11:39 -0500
From:	Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com>
To:	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:	Jessica Yu <jeyu@...hat.com>, Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>,
	Miroslav Benes <mbenes@...e.cz>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Michael Ellerman <mpe@...erman.id.au>,
	Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@...ibm.com>,
	live-patching@...r.kernel.org,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org,
	"linux-s390@...r.kernel.org" <linux-s390@...r.kernel.org>,
	Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@...e.com>, Jiri Slaby <jslaby@...e.cz>,
	Petr Mladek <pmladek@...e.com>,
	Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@...onical.com>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 05/18] sched: add task flag for preempt IRQ
 tracking

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 11:06:53AM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...hat.com> wrote:
> > A preempted function might not have had a chance to save the frame
> > pointer to the stack yet, which can result in its caller getting skipped
> > on a stack trace.
> >
> > Add a flag to indicate when the task has been preempted so that stack
> > dump code can determine whether the stack trace is reliable.
> 
> I think I like this, but how do you handle the rather similar case in
> which a task goes to sleep because it's waiting on IO that happened in
> response to get_user, put_user, copy_from_user, etc?

Hm, good question.  I was thinking that page faults had a dedicated
stack, but now looking at the entry and traps code, that doesn't seem to
be the case.

Anyway I think it shouldn't be a problem if we make sure that any kernel
function which might trigger a valid page fault (e.g.,
copy_user_generic_string) do the proper frame pointer setup first.  Then
the stack should still be reliable.

In fact I might be able to teach objtool to enforce that: any function
which uses an exception table should create a stack frame.

Or alternatively, maybe set some kind of flag for page faults, similar
to what I did with this patch.

-- 
Josh