linux-kernel - Re: [watchdog] combine nmi

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Fri, 9 Apr 2010 02:00:38 +0200
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@...il.com>
Cc:	Don Zickus <dzickus@...hat.com>, mingo@...e.hu,
	peterz@...radead.org, aris@...hat.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [watchdog] combine nmi_watchdog and softlockup

On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 07:31:15PM +0400, Cyrill Gorcunov wrote:
> > I fear the cpu clock is not going to help you detecting any hard lockups.
> > If you're stuck in an interrupt or an irq disabled loop, your cpu clock is
> > not going to fire.
> >
> 
> I guess it's not supposed to. For such cases only nmi irqs may help for which
> the perf events are there (/me need to check if we program apic timer for anything
> like that). But it should help for other deadlocks. Or I miss something?


Actually not. What the hardlockup detector does it to check the progression
of irqs.

So it detects true hardlockups: stuck in an irq disabled section.
If you don't have NMI to detect that (here this made by hardware clock based
on cpu cycles overflows), then you're screwed. The hardlockup detector is
useless with a maskable irq based clock.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/