Re: [PATCH rc v2 0/5] iommu/arm-smmu-v3: Fix device crash on kdump kernel

Jason Gunthorpe
2026-04-16T17:20:26Z

On Thu, Apr 16, 2026 at 05:49:24PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
> On 15/04/2026 10:17 pm, Nicolin Chen wrote:
> > When transitioning to a kdump kernel, the primary kernel might have crashed
> > while endpoint devices were actively bus-mastering DMA. Currently, the SMMU
> > driver aggressively resets the hardware during probe by clearing CR0_SMMUEN
> > and setting the Global Bypass Attribute (GBPA) to ABORT.
> >
> > In a kdump scenario, this aggressive reset is highly destructive:
> > a) If GBPA is set to ABORT, in-flight DMA will be aborted, generating fatal
> > PCIe AER or SErrors that may panic the kdump kernel
> > b) If GBPA is set to BYPASS, in-flight DMA targeting some IOVAs will bypass
> > the SMMU and corrupt the physical memory at those 1:1 mapped IOVAs.
>
> But wasn't that rather the point? Th kdump kernel doesn't know the scope of
> how much could have gone wrong (including potentially the SMMU configuration
> itself), so it just blocks everything, resets and reenables the devices it
> cares about, and ignores whatever else might be on fire.

The purpose of kdump is to have the maximum chance to capture a dump
from the blown up kernel.

Yes, on a perfect platform aborting the entire SMMU should improve the
chance of getting that dump.

But sadly there are so many busted up platforms where if you start
messing with the IOMMU they will explode and blow up the kdump. x86
and "firmware first" error handling systems are particularly notorious
for nasty behavior like this.

Seems like there are now ARM systems too. :(

So, the iommu drivers have been preserving the IOMMU and not
disrupting the DMAs on x86 for a long time. This is established kdump
practice.

> If AER can panic a kdump kernel, that seems like a failing of the kdump
> kernel itself more than anything else (especially given the likelihood that
> additional AER events could follow from whatever initial crash/failure
> triggered kdump to begin with).

Probably the kdump wasn't triggered by AER. You want kdump to not
trigger more RAS events that might blow up the kdump while it is
trying to run.. That increases the chance of success

> And frankly if some device getting a
> translation fault could directly SError the whole system, then I'd say that
> system is pretty doomed in general, kdump or not.

Aborting the SMMU while ATS is enabled also fails all ATS and
translated requests which is a catastrophic event for a CXL type
device that a correct OS should never trigger. The catastrophic
explosion of the CXL device also unplugs all it's RAM from the system
and the kdump kernel just cannot handle the resulting cascade of RAS
failures. Plus you loose all that CXL RAM you may have wanted to dump..

Regardless, the platform has this flaw and to make kdump work it has
to avoid triggering these errors like x86 does.

Jason