linux-kernel - Re: smp_call_function

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]

Message-ID: <CA+55aFxbExryRCcdF9TUutscG=Tq7_s7iL5hk8=8qj19_BUK9g@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Thu, 2 Apr 2015 13:57:33 -0700
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
Cc:	Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@...onical.com>,
	Rafael David Tinoco <inaddy@...ntu.com>,
	Peter Anvin <hpa@...or.com>,
	Jiang Liu <jiang.liu@...ux.intel.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>,
	Gema Gomez <gema.gomez-solano@...onical.com>,
	"the arch/x86 maintainers" <x86@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: smp_call_function_single lockups

On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org> wrote:
>
> So one possibility would be that an 'IPI was sent but lost'.

Yes, the "sent but lost" thing would certainly explain the lockups.

At the same time, that sounds like a huge hardware bug, and that's
somewhat surprising/unlikely.

That said.

> We could try the following trick: poll for completion for a couple of
> seconds (since an IPI is not held up by anything but irqs-off
> sections, it should arrive within microseconds typically - seconds of
> polling should be more than enough), and if the IPI does not arrive,
> print a warning message and re-send the IPI.

Sounds like a reasonable approach. At worst it doesn't fix anything,
and we never see any messages, and that tells us something too.

                        Linus
--
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/