Re: [PATCH v3 1/3] arm64/ras: support sea error recovery

[Xiongfeng Wang]

Hi James,

Thanks for your comments.

On 2017/9/9 2:15, James Morse wrote:
> Hi Xie XiuQi,
> 
> (Sorry a few versions of this went past before I caught up with it)
> 
> On 07/09/17 08:45, Xie XiuQi wrote:
>> With ARM v8.2 RAS Extension, SEA are usually triggered when memory errors
>> are consumed. In some cases, if the error address is in a clean page or a
>> read-only page, there is a chance to recover. Such as error occurs in a
>> instruction page, we can reread this page from disk instead of killing
>> process.
> 
>> Because memory_failure() may sleep, we can not call it directly in SEA
>> exception context.
> 
> This is why we have memory_failure_queue() instead, it ... bother. That doesn't
> look nmi-safe. (I thought this ended with an llist, but clearly I was looking at
> the wrong thing).
> 
> It doesn't look like this is a problem for NOTIFY_SEA as it would only interrupt
> itself on the same CPU if the memory-failure code/data were corrupt. (which is
> not a case we can handle). We need to fix this before any of the asynchronous
> NMI-like RAS notifications for arm64 get merged.
> 
> (this is one problem, but I don't think its 'the' problem you are trying to
> solve with this series).
> 
> 
>> So we saved faulting physical address associated with
>> a process in the ghes handler and set __TIF_SEA_NOTIFY.
> 
> A per-notification type TIF flag looks fishy, surely this would affect all
> NMI-like RAS notification methods?
> 
> 
>> When we return
>> from SEA exception context and get into do_notify_resume() before the
>> process running, we could check it and call memory_failure() to do
>> recovery. It's safe, because we are in process context.
> 
> I'm afraid I don't think this is the best approach for fixing this.
> Its tied to the notification type, but the notification should be irrelevant
> once we call ghes_proc().
> It adds code poking around in CPER and ACPI/GHES to the arm64 arch code, all of
> this should be in the core common code.
> Most importantly: this means arm64 behaves differently with regard to handling
> memory errors to other architectures using ACPI. Two behaviours means twice the
> code, review and bugs...

I think we can use arch_apei_report_mem_error() to report memory error, just like
what is implemented in x86. We can record the memory address in somewhere else, namely
report the error. Then the SEA handler can use the memory error reported.

> 
> 
> Delaying the handling until we re-enter user-space means faults that may affect
> the kernel aren't handled until much later. Just because the fault was
> synchronous and user-space was running doesn't mean only user space is affected.
> Some examples I've collected so far: the zero-page may be corrupt, this is
> mapped into every process and used by the kernel. Similarly corruption in the
> vdso affects all user-space. The fault may affect the page tables, this affects
> all users of the mm_struct.

I am not sure if memory_failure can recognize  the zero page as a kernel page and
just panic. If several processes share a same page, I think we don't have to kill
the process until it access the address containing the errors. If the process access
the error address, a SEA will occur again, then we can handle it. If the process
will never access the error address, such as a syscall in vdso the process won't use,
we don't have to kill the process.

For vdso case, we havn't repaired the error. It will affect newly created processes.
I don't figure out how to handle this. Is it a kernel page mapped into user space
or memory_failure will just panic when handling this page.

> 
> (I'm sure we agree that an synchronous-external-abort interrupting the kernel is
> fatal for the kernel, but the other way round isn't always true).
> 
> Setting a TIF flag to handle the error before re-entering user-space is a
> problem as the scheduler may choose to pre-empt this task and run all the other
> tasks before this eventually gets handled.
> 
> 
> Assuming this is just a problem with memory_failure_queue(), two alternatives I
> can suggest are making memory_failure_queue() nmi-safe,
Yes, I agree, but it may be hard to be achieved.

 or abstracting
> NOTIFY_NMI's estatus pool/cache to use for the arm64 NMI-like notifications too.
> 
> If there is more to this, can you explain the problem you're trying to solve?
> (I suspect there may be an issue with multiple-signals being merged, or exactly
> when memory_failure_queue()'s work gets run.) Can you outline the sequence of
> events?
> 
> 
> You're picking a physical address out of 'ARM Processor Error Information
> Structure', these correspond with Cache, TLB, Bus or (the mysterious) 'micro
> architectural error'. I don't see anything checking the error type.
> Given the physical address, are you adding error-handling for cache-errors with
> this series?
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> James
> 
> 
> .
> 

Thanks,

Xiongfeng Wang