Re: [PATCH 4/4] [x86] perf: fix accidentally ack'ing a second event on intel perf counter

Stephane Eranian
2010-09-01T13:04:50Z

Don,

Found your patch on LKML (I am not on it).

In your changelog you said:

> During testing of a patch to stop having the perf subsytem swallow nmis,
> it was uncovered that Nehalem boxes were randomly getting unknown nmis
> when using the perf tool.
>
> Moving the ack'ing of the PMI closer to when we get the status allows
> the hardware to properly re-set the PMU bit signaling another PMI was
> triggered during the processing of the first PMI. This allows the new
> logic for dealing with the shortcomings of multiple PMIs to handle the
> extra NMI by 'eat'ing it later.

> Now one can wonder why are we getting a second PMI when we disable all
> the PMUs in the beginning of the NMI handler to prevent such a case, for
> that I do not know. But I know the fix below helps deal with this quirk.
>

I am assuming you're talking about back-to-back NMIs here, not nested NMIs.
I don't quite understand the scenario here. Is it the case that you handled 1
overflow, and then right as you return from the interrupt, you get a second
PMI with a ovfl_status=0 ?

What events did you measure? Which counters did you use?
Did you have HT turned on?

> Tested on multiple Nehalems where the problem was occuring. With the
> patch, the code now loops a second time to handle the second PMI (whereas
> before it was not).