[PATCH AUTOSEL 4.14 093/123] ARM: avoid Cortex-A9 livelock on tight dmb loops

Sasha Levin
2019-03-27T18:19:38Z

From: Russell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk>

[ Upstream commit 5388a5b82199facacd3d7ac0d05aca6e8f902fed ]

machine_crash_nonpanic_core() does this:

while (1)
cpu_relax();

because the kernel has crashed, and we have no known safe way to deal
with the CPU. So, we place the CPU into an infinite loop which we
expect it to never exit - at least not until the system as a whole is
reset by some method.

In the absence of erratum 754327, this code assembles to:

b .

In other words, an infinite loop. When erratum 754327 is enabled,
this becomes:

1: dmb
b 1b

It has been observed that on some systems (eg, OMAP4) where, if a
crash is triggered, the system tries to kexec into the panic kernel,
but fails after taking the secondary CPU down - placing it into one
of these loops. This causes the system to livelock, and the most
noticable effect is the system stops after issuing:

Loading crashdump kernel...

to the system console.

The tested as working solution I came up with was to add wfe() to
these infinite loops thusly:

while (1) {
cpu_relax();
wfe();
}

which, without 754327 builds to:

1: wfe
b 1b

or with 754327 is enabled:

1: dmb
wfe
b 1b

Adding "wfe" does two things depending on the environment we're running
under:
- where we're running on bare metal, and the processor implements
"wfe", it stops us spinning endlessly in a loop where we're never
going to do any useful work.
- if we're running in a VM, it allows the CPU to be given back to the
hypervisor and rescheduled for other purposes (maybe a different VM)
rather than wasting CPU cycles inside a crashed VM.

However, in light of erratum 794072, Will Deacon wanted to see 10 nops
as well - which is reasonable to cover the case where we have erratum
754327 enabled _and_ we have a processor that doesn't implement the
wfe hint.

So, we now end up with:

1: wfe
b 1b

when erratum 754327 is disabled, or:

1: dmb
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
nop
wfe
b 1b

when erratum 754327 is enabled. We also get the dmb + 10 nop
sequence elsewhere in the kernel, in terminating loops.

This is reasonable - it means we get the workaround for erratum
794072 when erratum 754327 is enabled, but still relinquish the dead
processor - either by placing it in a lower power mode when wfe is
implemented as such or by returning it to the hypervisior, or in the
case where wfe is a no-op, we use the workaround specified in erratum
794072 to avoid the problem.

These as two entirely orthogonal problems - the 10 nops addresses
erratum 794072, and the wfe is an optimisation that makes the system
more efficient when crashed either in terms of power consumption or
by allowing the host/other VMs to make use of the CPU.

I don't see any reason not to use kexec() inside a VM - it has the
potential to provide automated recovery from a failure of the VMs
kernel with the opportunity for saving a crashdump of the failure.
A panic() with a reboot timeout won't do that, and reading the
libvirt documentation, setting on_reboot to "preserve" won't either
(the documentation states "The preserve action for an on_reboot event
is treated as a destroy".) Surely it has to be a good thing to
avoiding having CPUs spinning inside a VM that is doing no useful
work.

Acked-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
arch/arm/include/asm/barrier.h | 2 ++
arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h | 6 +++++-
arch/arm/kernel/machine_kexec.c | 5 ++++-
arch/arm/kernel/smp.c | 4 +++-
arch/arm/mach-omap2/prm_common.c | 4 +++-
5 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm/include/asm/barrier.h b/arch/arm/include/asm/barrier.h
index 69772e742a0a..83ae97c049d9 100644
--- a/arch/arm/include/asm/barrier.h
+++ b/arch/arm/include/asm/barrier.h
@@ -11,6 +11,8 @@
#define sev() __asm__ __volatile__ ("sev" : : : "memory")
#define wfe() __asm__ __volatile__ ("wfe" : : : "memory")
#define wfi() __asm__ __volatile__ ("wfi" : : : "memory")
+#else
+#define wfe() do { } while (0)
#endif

#if __LINUX_ARM_ARCH__ >= 7
diff --git a/arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h b/arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h
index c3d5fc124a05..768b6fe7640e 100644
--- a/arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h
+++ b/arch/arm/include/asm/processor.h
@@ -77,7 +77,11 @@ extern void release_thread(struct task_struct *);
unsigned long get_wchan(struct task_struct *p);

#if __LINUX_ARM_ARCH__ == 6 || defined(CONFIG_ARM_ERRATA_754327)
-#define cpu_relax() smp_mb()
+#define cpu_relax() \
+ do { \
+ smp_mb(); \
+ __asm__ __volatile__("nop; nop; nop; nop; nop; nop; nop; nop; nop; nop;"); \
+ } while (0)
#else
#define cpu_relax() barrier()
#endif
diff --git a/arch/arm/kernel/machine_kexec.c b/arch/arm/kernel/machine_kexec.c
index c15318431986..6f77f52baf02 100644
--- a/arch/arm/kernel/machine_kexec.c
+++ b/arch/arm/kernel/machine_kexec.c
@@ -91,8 +91,11 @@ void machine_crash_nonpanic_core(void *unused)

set_cpu_online(smp_processor_id(), false);
atomic_dec(&waiting_for_crash_ipi);
- while (1)
+
+ while (1) {
cpu_relax();
+ wfe();
+ }
}

void crash_smp_send_stop(void)
diff --git a/arch/arm/kernel/smp.c b/arch/arm/kernel/smp.c
index 65f85737c6a2..844bb2f1ddef 100644
--- a/arch/arm/kernel/smp.c
+++ b/arch/arm/kernel/smp.c
@@ -602,8 +602,10 @@ static void ipi_cpu_stop(unsigned int cpu)
local_fiq_disable();
local_irq_disable();

- while (1)
+ while (1) {
cpu_relax();
+ wfe();
+ }
}

static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct completion *, cpu_completion);
diff --git a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/prm_common.c b/arch/arm/mach-omap2/prm_common.c
index 09180a59b1c9..2f215facba10 100644
--- a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/prm_common.c
+++ b/arch/arm/mach-omap2/prm_common.c
@@ -528,8 +528,10 @@ void omap_prm_reset_system(void)

prm_ll_data->reset_system();

- while (1)
+ while (1) {
cpu_relax();
+ wfe();
+ }
}

/**
--
2.19.1