Re: [PATCH] rcu/torture: Change order of warning and trace dump

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 05:19:03PM +0200, Anna-Maria Behnsen wrote:
> Dumping a big ftrace buffer could lead to a RCU stall. So there is the
> ftrace buffer and the stall information which needs to be printed. When
> there is additionaly a WARN_ON() which describes the reason for the ftrace
> buffer dump and the WARN_ON() is executed _after_ ftrace buffer dump, the
> information get lost in the middle of the RCU stall information.
> 
> Therefore print WARN_ON() message before dumping the ftrace buffer in
> rcu_torture_writer().
> 
> Signed-off-by: Anna-Maria Behnsen <anna-maria@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Reviewed-by: Benedikt Spranger <b.spranger@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello, Anna-Maria!

Good point, but we get caught out either way.  Either we take the chance
of losing the WARN() message as you say, or we take the chance of the
activity in the WARN() message overwriting needed information in the
trace buffer.

Would it work to shut off tracing, do the WARN(), and only then do the
rcu_ftrace_dump()?

							Thanx, Paul

> ---
>  kernel/rcu/rcutorture.c | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/rcu/rcutorture.c b/kernel/rcu/rcutorture.c
> index 55d049c39608..cbbe37d7701e 100644
> --- a/kernel/rcu/rcutorture.c
> +++ b/kernel/rcu/rcutorture.c
> @@ -1287,8 +1287,8 @@ rcu_torture_writer(void *arg)
>  				if (list_empty(&rcu_tortures[i].rtort_free) &&
>  				    rcu_access_pointer(rcu_torture_current) !=
>  				    &rcu_tortures[i]) {
> -					rcu_ftrace_dump(DUMP_ALL);
>  					WARN(1, "%s: rtort_pipe_count: %d\n", __func__, rcu_tortures[i].rtort_pipe_count);
> +					rcu_ftrace_dump(DUMP_ALL);
>  				}
>  		if (stutter_waited)
>  			sched_set_normal(current, oldnice);
> -- 
> 2.20.1
>