Re: Regression: ONE CPU fails bootup at Re: [3.2.0-RC7] BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000598 1.478005] IP: [<ffffffff8107a6c4>] queue_work_on+0x4/0x30

[John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>]

On Wed, 2012-01-04 at 15:13 +0100, Stefan Bader wrote:
> On 04.01.2012 13:25, Stefan Bader wrote:
> > On 04.01.2012 09:17, Stefan Bader wrote:
> >> On 04.01.2012 01:53, John Stultz wrote:
> >>> On Wed, 2012-01-04 at 11:31 +1100, NeilBrown wrote:
> >>>> On Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:09:48 -0800 John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org> wrote:
> >>>>> >From the stack trace, we've kicked off a rtc_timer_do_work, probably
> >>>>> from the rtc_initialize_alarm() schedule_work call added in Neil's
> >>>>> patch.  From there, we call __rtc_set_alarm -> cmos_set_alarm ->
> >>>>> cmos_rq_disable -> cmos_checkintr -> rtc_update_irq -> schedule_work.
> >>
> >> Sorry, I was off for the evening a while after sending this out. And I just
> >> started, so a few thing I will be doing later but have not yet had time.
> >>
> >> Over night I had still be thinking on this and maybe one important fact I had
> >> been ignoring. This really has only been observed on paravirt guests on Xen as
> >> far as I know. And one thing that I should have pointed out is that
> >>
> >> [    0.792634] rtc_cmos rtc_cmos: rtc core: registered rtc_cmos as rtc0
> >> [    0.792725] rtc_cmos: probe of rtc_cmos failed with error -38
> >>
> >> So first the registration is done and the first line is the last thing printed
> >> in the registration function. Then, and that line always comes after, the probe,
> >> which looks like being done asynchronously, detects that the rtc is not
> >> implemented. I would assume that this causes the rtc to be unregistered again
> >> and that is probably the point where, under the right circumstances, the worker
> >> triggered by the initialize alarm is trying to set another alarm. Probably while
> >> some of the elements of the structure started to be torn down. I need to check
> >> on that code path, yet. So right now its more a guess.
> >>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> So, what it looks to me is that in cmos_checkintr, we grab the cmos->rtc
> >>>>> and pass that along. Unfortunately, since the cmos->rtc value isn't set
> >>>>> until after rtc_device_register() returns its null at that point. So
> >>>>> your patch isn't really fixing the issue, but just reducing the race
> >>>>> window for the second cpu to schedule the work.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Sigh. I'd guess dropping the schedule_work call from
> >>>>> rtc_initialize_alarm() is the right approach (see below). When reviewing
> >>>>> Neil's patch it seemed like a good idea there, but it seems off to me
> >>>>> now.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Neil, any thoughts on the following? Can you expand on the condition you
> >>>>> were worried about in around that call?
> >>>>
> >>>> If you set an alarm in the future, then shutdown and boot again after that
> >>>> time, then you will end up with a timer_queue node which is in the past.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks for explaining this again.
> >>>
> >>> Hrm. It seems the easy answer is to simply not add alarms that are in
> >>> the past.  Further, I'm a bit perplexed, as if they are in the past, the
> >>> enabled flag shouldn't be set.   __rtc_read_alarm() does check the
> >>> current time, so maybe we can make sure we don't return old values? I
> >>> guess I assumed __rtc_read_alarm() avoided returning stale values, but
> >>> apparently not.
> >>>
> >>>> When this happens the queue gets stuck.  That entry-in-the-past won't get
> >>>> removed until and interrupt happens and an interrupt won't happen because the
> >>>> RTC only triggers an interrupt when the alarm is "now".
> >>>>
> >>>> So you'll find that e.g. "hwclock" will always tell you that 'select' timed
> >>>> out.
> >>>>
> >>>> So we force the interrupt work to happen at the start just in case.
> >>>
> >>> Unfortunately its too early. 
> >>>
> >>>> Did you see my proposed patch which converted those calls to do the work
> >>>> in-process rather than passing it to a worker-thread?  I think that is a
> >>>> clean fix.
> >>>
> >>> I don't think I saw it today. Was it from before the holidays?
> >>>
> >>
> >> I fear I caused a bit of confusion there. Neil responded to my initial mail
> >> which was done as a reply to the mail announcing this patch for stable (which
> >> just was the first thread I could get hold of).
> >> I will try Neil's patch as well. And in parallel try to see whether the theory I
> >> had this night makes sense. If it does, then it is only indirectly that the work
> >> is scheduled too early. In that case just the teardown needs to make sure that
> >> no work is being run while removal. Well, maybe the question is whether there
> >> should be a delay in running the irq work until the device really, really is
> >> completely set up... But that sounds a bit more complicated.
> > 
> > By now I tried Neil's proposed patch and unfortunately that makes things rather
> > worse. I also played around with the idea of the unregistration race. Maybe
> > there also is one (that cancel_work_sync should be called before unregistering
> > the device) but definitely it is not what happens at least in the one CPU case.
> > I added some more printk's and the crash happens before even the rtc core class
> > has been fully registered. And no unregister is call has been made either.
> > 
> > Which may point to execution of the irq worker (including a schedule_work)
> > before the rtc-cmos parts are finished... Would explain why moving the
> > initialize call further down does at least narrow the window for it to happen...
> > The only thing I do not understand then is why that seems only to happen on Xen
> > guests...
> > 
> 
> Darn, guess I understand now... So cmos-rtc will call rtc_device_register from
> within do_cmos_probe and set cmos_rtc.rtc with the pointer that
> rtc_device_register returns.
> But when having rtc_initialize_alarm being called earlier in
> rtc_device_register, and that queues the work, there is a chance it will fire
> even before that function returns.
> And then cmos_checkintr will dereference the null pointer still stored in
> cmos_rtc.rtc for calling rtc_update_irq...

Hey Stefan, Konrad, Sander, Neil,
	Thanks again for the bug reporting and sorry for the earlier trouble.
So after the problematic patch was reverted for 3.2, I worked with Neil
to try to address the issue in a better way. It looks like its working
for Neil, so I was wondering if any of you could look over and maybe
give the following tree a whirl:
	git://git.linaro.org/people/jstultz/linux.git dev/rtc-fixups

The shortlog is here:
http://git.linaro.org/gitweb?p=people/jstultz/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/dev/rtc-fixups

If this avoids the issue for you, and no one sees any other problems,
I'll queue these for 3.3

thanks
-john