Re: [PATCH] Fix almost infinite loop in APIC

[Sheng Yang <sheng@linux.intel.com>]

On Friday 09 January 2009 00:36:06 Alexander Graf wrote:
> While booting Linux in VMware ESX, I encountered a strange effect
> in the in-kernel lapic implementation: time went backwards!
>
> While this should never occur, because of that the while loop that
> is done after the invalid calculations caused my host system to hang.
>
> In order to make debugging easier, let's replace this as suggested
> with a modulo function and not run into the danger of looping forever.
>
> To replace the nice hint this bug gave me that the values are broken,
> I added a printk message so people encountering this can at least
> see that something is fishy.
>
> Of course, the real issue needs to be fixed as well! I'm open to ideas
> why now < last_update!
>
> (Thanks to Kevin for his help in debugging this)
>
> Signed-off-by: Alexander Graf <agraf@suse.de>
> Signed-off-by: Kevin Wolf <kwolf@suse.de>
> ---

Hi Alexander

I'm a little suspect here:

> 	if (unlikely(ktime_to_ns(now) <=
> 		ktime_to_ns(apic->timer.last_update))) {
> 		/* Wrap around */
> 		passed = ktime_add(( {
> 				    (ktime_t) {
> 				    .tv64 = KTIME_MAX -
> 				    (apic->timer.last_update).tv64}; }
> 				   ), now);
> 		apic_debug("time elapsed\n");
> 	} else
> 		passed = ktime_sub(now, apic->timer.last_update);

And now apic timer base is hr_timer with CLOCK_MONOTONIC, and get_time() is 
really ktime_get() which is almost impossible to wrap around. If it's 
overflow, at least we need a warning. I think this piece of code due to clock 
source change.

So I doubt: due to some reason, now <= apic->timer.last_update, which cause a 
big wrap around operation.

And the most suspect:

> void kvm_apic_timer_intr_post(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, int vec)
> {
> 	struct kvm_lapic *apic = vcpu->arch.apic;
>
> 	if (apic && apic_lvt_vector(apic, APIC_LVTT) == vec)
> 		apic->timer.last_update = ktime_add_ns(
> 				apic->timer.last_update,
> 				apic->timer.period);
> }

Not sure what's happening, have you tried this? (In fact, I am little willing 
to replace all apic->timer.dev.base->get_time() with more explicit ktime_get() 
as in pit.)

--
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c b/arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c
index afac68c..414e7e0 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/lapic.c
@@ -1115,9 +1115,7 @@ void kvm_apic_timer_intr_post(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, int 
vec)
        struct kvm_lapic *apic = vcpu->arch.apic;

        if (apic && apic_lvt_vector(apic, APIC_LVTT) == vec)
-               apic->timer.last_update = ktime_add_ns(
-                               apic->timer.last_update,
-                               apic->timer.period);
+               apic->timer.last_update = apic->timer.dev.base->get_time();
 }

 int kvm_get_apic_interrupt(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)


-- 
regards
Yang, Sheng