Re: [PATCH] kernel/isolation: Asset that a housekeeping CPU comes up at boot time

Frederic Weisbecker
2019-06-17T19:05:58Z

On Mon, Jun 17, 2019 at 05:59:31PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2019 at 05:24:32PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> > Nicholas Piggin's on June 1, 2019 9:39 pm:
> > > With the change to allow the boot CPU0 to be isolated, it is possible
> > > to specify command line options that result in no housekeeping CPU
> > > online at boot.
> > >
> > > An 8 CPU system booted with "nohz_full=0-6 maxcpus=4", for example.
> > >
> > > It is not easily possible at housekeeping init time to know all the
> > > various SMP options that will result in an invalid configuration, so
> > > this patch adds a sanity check after SMP init, to ensure that a
> > > housekeeping CPU has been onlined.
> > >
> > > The panic is undesirable, but it's better than the alternative of an
> > > obscure non deterministic failure. The panic will reliably happen
> > > when advanced parameters are used incorrectly.
> >
> > Ping on this one? This should resolve Frederic's remaining objection
> > to the series (at least until he solves it more generally).
> >
> > As the series has already been merged, should we get this upstream
> > before release?
>
> I was hoping for feedback from Frederic, lacking that, I've queued it
> now.
>

Sorry I just came back from vacation. Any chance we can use a WARN() instead?
I prefer to use panic() only when data is really threatened or such.

Thanks.