Re: [PATCH v2 1/4] nmi_backtrace: add more trigger_*_cpu_backtrace() methods

[Chris Metcalf]

On 3/17/2016 6:55 PM, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> The RCU stall-warn stack traces can be ugly, agreed.
>
> That said, RCU used to use NMI-based stack traces, but switched to the
> current scheme due to the NMIs having the unfortunate habit of locking
> things up, which IIRC often meant no stack traces at all.  If I recall
> correctly, one of the problems was self-deadlock in printk().

Steven Rostedt enabled the per_cpu printk func support in June 2014, and
the nmi_backtrace code uses it to just capture printk output to percpu
buffers, so I think it's going to be a lot more robust than earlier attempts.

--
Chris Metcalf, Mellanox Technologies
http://www.mellanox.com