Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86/MCE: Add command line option to extend MCE Records pool

Borislav Petkov
2024-02-12T20:10:56Z

On Mon, Feb 12, 2024 at 07:49:43PM +0000, Luck, Tony wrote:
> Yes. The question is whether a #MC that come in the middle of list_rcu_add()
> can safely do list_for_each_entry_rcu() on the same list.
>
> RCU is black magic ... maybe it can do this? Adding Paul.

Yeah, the list traversal might be ok as this is what that list_add does
- you can't encounter an inconsistent list - but we still take
a spinlock on addition and the commit which added it:

7f184275aa30 ("lib, Make gen_pool memory allocator lockless")

says

The lockless operation only works if there is enough memory available.
If new memory is added to the pool a lock has to be still taken. So
any user relying on locklessness has to ensure that sufficient memory
is preallocated.

and this is exactly what we're doing - adding new memory.

So, until we're absolutely sure that it is ok to interrupt a context
holding a spinlock with a #MC which is non-maskable, I don't think we
wanna do this.

Thx.

--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.