Re: [PATCH] 3/3: MCA/MCE correctable error handling

["Jan Beulich" <jbeulich@novell.com>]

>>> "Christoph Egger" <Christoph.Egger@amd.com> 22.08.07 11:00 >>>
>On Tuesday 21 August 2007 18:02:54 Jan Beulich wrote:
>> >+		if (mc_global->mc_flags & MC_FLAG_UNCORRECTABLE)
>> >+			printk(KERN_EMERG);
>> >+		else
>> >+			printk(KERN_INFO);
>>
>> KERN_INFO seems gross understatement here - generally, correctable MCs are
>> considered indicators that within not too distant future uncorrectable MCs
>> might result, so this generally is a call for action (and hence shouldn't
>> be hidden with default log level settings).
>
>Well, that is what the "old" code did. It used KERN_EMERG for fatal errors
>and KERN_INFO in the polling service routine. What do you want me to suggest?

This should be at least KERN_WARNING, probably even KERN_ERR (note
though that KERN_ERR and KERN_EMERG both resolve to XENLOG_ERR).

>> Also, I'm not sure adjusting the polling frequency makes much sense - 30s
>> seems an awful lot of time to me.
>
>It's not clear to me what you are trying to tell me. Please explain/elaborate.

What I'm trying to say is that I'd think this should be polled at a much higher
frequency (I'd suggest 1Hz), without adjustments. Typically, a healthy system
will not encounter problems soon after boot, but after running for perhaps a
very long time (and a system in bad condition is likely to encounter problems
right away, so wouldn't be affected by changing the polling rate). Thus, in the
general case, you'd have a comparably long latency, during which some kind
of (automated) action could already be taken to preserve data consistency.

Jan