Ok, this is one for those who like to look at weird crashes/bugs.
Here's a new regression that popped up in this merge window, there's some sort of slab corruption going on in tty data structures:
[ 74.900215] =============================================================================
[ 74.908193] BUG kmalloc-8: Poison overwritten
[ 74.908193] -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ 74.908193] [ 74.908193] INFO: 0x5d883a14-0x5d883a14. First byte 0x6a instead of 0x6b
[ 74.908193] INFO: Allocated in tty_ldisc_try_get+0x1a/0xb0 age=8015 cpu=0 pid=1
[ 74.908193] INFO: Freed in tty_ldisc_put+0x48/0x50 age=4 cpu=3 pid=4236
[ 74.908193] INFO: Slab 0x42c6eeb4 objects=73 used=61 fp=0x5d883a10 flags=0x1d0000c3
[ 74.908193] INFO: Object 0x5d883a10 @offset=2576 fp=0x5d883d90
[ 74.908193] [ 74.908193] Bytes b4 0x5d883a00: 01 00 00 00 de 04 ff ff 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a ....ï.ïïZZZZZZZZ
[ 74.908193] Object 0x5d883a10: 6b 6b 6b 6b 6a 6b 6b a5 kkkkjkkï
[ 74.908193] Redzone 0x5d883a18: bb bb bb bb ïïïï [ 74.908193] Padding 0x5d883a40: 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a ZZZZZZZZ [ 74.908193] Pid: 4230, comm: mingetty Not tainted 2.6.30-tip #744
[ 74.908193] Call Trace:
[ 74.908193] [<410ae628>] print_trailer+0xc8/0xd0
[ 74.908193] [<410ae6a3>] check_bytes_and_report+0x73/0x90
[ 74.908193] [<410ae941>] check_object+0xa1/0x130
[ 74.908193] [<410aef1e>] alloc_debug_processing+0x5e/0xd0
[ 74.908193] [<410af99e>] __slab_alloc+0x11e/0x150
[ 74.908193] [<413d9c7a>] ? tty_ldisc_try_get+0x1a/0xb0
[ 74.908193] [<410afcdb>] kmem_cache_alloc+0x7b/0x120
[ 74.908193] [<413d9c7a>] ? tty_ldisc_try_get+0x1a/0xb0
[ 74.908193] [<413d9c7a>] ? tty_ldisc_try_get+0x1a/0xb0
[ 74.908193] [<413d9c7a>] tty_ldisc_try_get+0x1a/0xb0
[ 74.908193] [<410b06a3>] ? __kmalloc+0x163/0x170
[ 74.908193] [<413d9d77>] tty_ldisc_get+0x17/0x40
[ 74.908193] [<413da63d>] tty_ldisc_init+0xd/0x30
[ 74.908193] [<413d4098>] initialize_tty_struct+0x38/0x210
[ 74.908193] [<413d5d6f>] tty_init_dev+0x4f/0xb0
[ 74.908193] [<413d5f25>] __tty_open+0x155/0x2d0
[ 74.908193] [<413d60b7>] tty_open+0x17/0x30
[ 74.908193] [<410bb599>] chrdev_open+0xe9/0x100
[ 74.908193] [<410b721e>] __dentry_open+0xbe/0x190
[ 74.908193] [<410b813c>] nameidata_to_filp+0x2c/0x50
[ 74.908193] [<410bb4b0>] ? chrdev_open+0x0/0x100
[ 74.908193] [<410c2eba>] do_filp_open+0x2aa/0x580
[ 74.908193] [<4100a1bb>] ? sched_clock+0xb/0x20
[ 74.908193] [<410596c7>] ? put_lock_stats+0x17/0x30
[ 74.908193] [<41059734>] ? lock_release_holdtime+0x54/0x60
[ 74.908193] [<4105d4d9>] ? lock_release_nested+0x99/0xd0
[ 74.908193] [<41377421>] ? debug_spin_unlock+0x21/0x80
[ 74.908193] [<41377495>] ? _raw_spin_unlock+0x15/0x20
[ 74.908193] [<410cad50>] ? alloc_fd+0xc0/0xd0
[ 74.908193] [<410b7020>] do_sys_open+0x40/0x80
[ 74.908193] [<410b70ae>] sys_open+0x1e/0x30
[ 74.908193] [<4100388f>] sysenter_do_call+0x12/0x3c
[ 74.908193] FIX kmalloc-8: Restoring 0x5d883a14-0x5d883a14=0x6b
[ 74.908193] [ 74.908193] FIX kmalloc-8: Marking all objects used
It's a single bit corruption - but the hardware in question has a good track record with thousands of bootups, so it might be a reference count related corruption as well.
It started triggering in this merge window, so one of these might be a starting point:
3e3b5c0: tty: use prepare/finish_wait
5fc5b42: tty: remove sleep_on
26a2e20: tty: Untangle termios and mm mutex dependencies
0b4068a: tty: simplify buffer allocator cleanups
c481c70: tty: remove buffer special casing
852e99d: tty: bring ldisc into CodingStyle
f2c4c65: tty: Move ldisc_flush
c65c9bc: tty: rewrite the ldisc locking
e8b70e7: tty: Extract various bits of ldisc code
5f0878a: tty: Fix oops when scanning the polling list for kgdb
38db897: tty: throttling race fix
1ec739b: tty: Implement a drain delay in the tty port
fcc8ac1: tty: Add carrier processing on close to the tty_port core
(But ... if it's a low-probability bug then it might be an older bug as well.)
I tried two other reboots and the bug did not trigger in a way visible in the log - so it's sporadic. I've started a reboot loop with this kernel on that box, to see whether it's repeatable within a reasonable amount of time.
This is the -tip testbox that generally triggers SMP races very well (and as the first one amongst boxes) - so my first guess would be on some narrow (or not so narrow but config/timing dependent) SMP race window.
Since it's not reproducible in any easy fashion, there's no bisection possible either, on this box. I've Cc:-ed all the tty/kmalloc/race experts, maybe the bug can be seen ...
I've attached the config and the full bootlog.
Ingo