Re: [PATCH 3/6] x86/mce: Add support for new MCA_SYND register

[Ingo Molnar]

* Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From: Yazen Ghannam <Yazen.Ghannam@xxxxxxx>
> 
> Syndrome information is no longer contained in MCA_STATUS for SMCA
> systems but in a new register.
> 
> Add a synd field to struct mce to hold MCA_SYND register value. Add it
> to the end of struct mce to maintain compatibility with old versions of
> mcelog. Also, add it to the respective tracepoint.

>  /* AMD-specific bits */
> +#define MCI_STATUS_TCC		(1ULL<<55)  /* Task context corrupt */
> +#define MCI_STATUS_SYNDV	(1ULL<<53)  /* synd reg. valid */

> --- a/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/mce.h
> +++ b/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/mce.h
> @@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ struct mce {
>  	__u32 socketid;	/* CPU socket ID */
>  	__u32 apicid;	/* CPU initial apic ID */
>  	__u64 mcgcap;	/* MCGCAP MSR: machine check capabilities of CPU */
> +	__u64 synd;	/* MCA_SYND MSR: only valid on SMCA systems */
>  };

So why does neither the changelog nor the code comment actually _explain_ this and 
give aa bit of a background about what 'syndrome information' is and why we want 
to have kernel support for it?

This is why I hate kernel tooling that is not part of the kernel tree - the mcelog 
patch (hopefully ...) would tell us more about all this - but it's separate and 
this patch does not tell us anything ...

Thanks,

	Ingo