Re: [RFC PATCH] panic: fix deadlock in panic()

From: Sergey Senozhatsky
Date: Thu Jun 04 2020 - 03:59:28 EST


On (20/06/03 14:19), Cheng Jian wrote:
> A deadlock caused by logbuf_lock occurs when panic:
>
> a) Panic CPU is running in non-NMI context
> b) Panic CPU sends out shutdown IPI via NMI vector
> c) One of the CPUs that we bring down via NMI vector holded logbuf_lock
> d) Panic CPU try to hold logbuf_lock, then deadlock occurs.
>
> we try to re-init the logbuf_lock in printk_safe_flush_on_panic()
> to avoid deadlock, but it does not work here, because :
>
> Firstly, it is inappropriate to check num_online_cpus() here.
> When the CPU bring down via NMI vector, the panic CPU willn't
> wait too long for other cores to stop, so when this problem
> occurs, num_online_cpus() may be greater than 1.
>
> Secondly, printk_safe_flush_on_panic() is called after panic
> notifier callback, so if printk() is called in panic notifier
> callback, deadlock will still occurs. Eg, if ftrace_dump_on_oops
> is set, we print some debug information, it will try to hold the
> logbuf_lock.
>
> To avoid this deadlock, drop the num_online_cpus() check and call
> the printk_safe_flush_on_panic() before panic_notifier_list callback,
> attempt to re-init logbuf_lock from panic CPU.

We hopefully will get rid of some of these locks (around 5.9 kernel
maybe), so the deadlocks (at least in the printk-code) should become
less common.

-ss