linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 00/22] HWPOISON: Intro (v5)

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Message-ID: <20090616205449.GA4858@sgi.com>
Date:	Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:54:49 -0500
From:	Russ Anderson <rja@....com>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>,
	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Hugh Dickins <hugh.dickins@...cali.co.uk>,
	Wu Fengguang <fengguang.wu@...el.com>,
	Balbir Singh <balbir@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
	Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl>,
	Nick Piggin <npiggin@...e.de>,
	"riel@...hat.com" <riel@...hat.com>,
	"chris.mason@...cle.com" <chris.mason@...cle.com>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>, rja@....com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 00/22] HWPOISON: Intro (v5)

On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 01:28:54PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> Russ Anderson wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 03:29:34PM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> >> I think you're wrong about killing processes decreasing
> >> reliability. Traditionally we always tried to keep things running if possible
> >> instead of panicing.
> > 
> > Customers love the ia64 feature of killing a user process instead of
> > panicing the system when a user process hits a memory uncorrectable
> > error.  Avoiding a system panic is a very good thing.
> 
> Sometimes (sometimes it's a very bad thing.)
> 
> However, the more fundamental thing is that it is always trivial to
> promote an error to a higher severity; the opposite is not true.  As
> such, it becomes an administrator-set policy, which is what it needs to be.

Good point.  On ia64 the recovery code is implemented as a kernel
loadable module.  Installing the module turns on the feature.

That is handy for customer demos.  Install the module, inject a
memory error, have an application read the bad data and get killed.
Repeat a few times.  Then uninstall the module, inject a
memory error, have an application read the bad data and watch
the system panic.

Then it is the customer's choice to have it on or off.

-- 
Russ Anderson, OS RAS/Partitioning Project Lead  
SGI - Silicon Graphics Inc          rja@....com
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