Re: [PATCH clocksource] Reject bogus watchdog clocksource measurements

[Paul E. McKenney]

On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 04:09:01PM +0800, Feng Tang wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2022 at 04:09:04PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > One remaining clocksource-skew issue involves extreme CPU overcommit,
> > which can cause the clocksource watchdog measurements to be delayed by
> > tens of seconds.  This in turn means that a clock-skew criterion that
> > is appropriate for a 500-millisecond interval will instead give lots of
> > false positives.
> 
> I remembered I saw logs that the watchdog were delayed to dozens of
> or hundreds of seconds. 
> 
> Thanks for the fix which makes sense to me! with some nits below.
> 
> > Therefore, check for the watchdog clocksource reporting much larger or
> > much less than the time specified by WATCHDOG_INTERVAL.  In these cases,
> > print a pr_warn() warning and refrain from marking the clocksource under
> > test as being unstable.
> > 
> > Reported-by: Chris Mason <clm@xxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: John Stultz <jstultz@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Stephen Boyd <sboyd@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Feng Tang <feng.tang@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Cc: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > diff --git a/kernel/time/clocksource.c b/kernel/time/clocksource.c
> > index 8058bec87acee..dcaf38c062161 100644
> > --- a/kernel/time/clocksource.c
> > +++ b/kernel/time/clocksource.c
> > @@ -386,7 +386,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(clocksource_verify_percpu);
> >  
> >  static void clocksource_watchdog(struct timer_list *unused)
> >  {
> > -	u64 csnow, wdnow, cslast, wdlast, delta;
> > +	u64 csnow, wdnow, cslast, wdlast, delta, wdi;
> >  	int next_cpu, reset_pending;
> >  	int64_t wd_nsec, cs_nsec;
> >  	struct clocksource *cs;
> > @@ -440,6 +440,17 @@ static void clocksource_watchdog(struct timer_list *unused)
> >  		if (atomic_read(&watchdog_reset_pending))
> >  			continue;
> >  
> > +		/* Check for bogus measurements. */
> > +		wdi = jiffies_to_nsecs(WATCHDOG_INTERVAL);
> > +		if (wd_nsec < (wdi >> 2)) {
> > +			pr_warn("timekeeping watchdog on CPU%d: Watchdog clocksource '%s' advanced only %lld ns during %d-jiffy time interval, skipping watchdog check.\n", smp_processor_id(), watchdog->name, wd_nsec, WATCHDOG_INTERVAL);
> > +			continue;
> > +		}
> 
> If this happens (500ms timer happens only after less than 125ms),
> there is some severe problem with timer/interrupt system. 

Should I add ", suspect timer/interrupt bug" just after "jiffy time
interval"?  Or would a comment before that pr_warn() work better for you?

> > +		if (wd_nsec > (wdi << 2)) {
> > +			pr_warn("timekeeping watchdog on CPU%d: Watchdog clocksource '%s' advanced an excessive %lld ns during %d-jiffy time interval, probable CPU overutilization, skipping watchdog check.\n", smp_processor_id(), watchdog->name, wd_nsec, WATCHDOG_INTERVAL);
> > +			continue;
> > +		}
> 
> I agree with Waiman that some rate limiting may be needed. As there
> were reports of hundreds of seconds of delay, 2 seconds delay could
> easily happen if a system is too busy or misbehave to trigger this
> problem.

Good points, thank you both!

Left to myself, I would use a capped power-of-two backoff that was reset
any time that the interval was within bounds.  Maybe a cap of 10 minutes?

Or is there a better way to do this?

							Thanx, Paul