Re: CONFIG_DEBUG_VIRTUAL instant reboot.

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>]

* Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Jul 2015, Dave Jones wrote:
> > I bought a Haswell Xeon E3-1225 v3 box, and found that
> > my self-built kernel would instantly reboot the machine once
> > grub had loaded it.
> > 
> > Through trial and error I found the following options matter..
> > 
> > if I _enable_ DEBUG_PAGEALLOC, it boots fine.
> > disabling it again, instant death.
> > 
> > further narrowing down revealed that if I have DEBUG_PAGEALLOC off,
> > I also _must_ also have CONFIG_DEBUG_VIRTUAL turned off.
> > With both disabled, it also boots fine.
> > 
> > I tried earlyprintk, but this happens so soon I don't think
> > we're even at the point of initializing that code.
> > 
> > Any ideas how I can further narrow this down ?
> 
> I assume that VIRTUAL_BUG_ON() triggers very early. Changing it to
> WARN_ON() should keep the machine alive and give you a hint which of
> those checks explodes.

I suspect an early console might be useful as well, in case the kernel doesn't 
manage to boot.

> --- a/include/linux/mmdebug.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mmdebug.h
> @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ void dump_mm(const struct mm_struct *mm);
>  #endif
>  
>  #ifdef CONFIG_DEBUG_VIRTUAL
> -#define VIRTUAL_BUG_ON(cond) BUG_ON(cond)
> +#define VIRTUAL_BUG_ON(cond) WARN_ON(cond)

I'd make this WARN_ON_ONCE(), to see the first instance and to cross fingers 
afterwards and maybe boot up.

Thanks,

	Ingo