Re: linux-next: stall warnings and deadlock on Arm64 (was: [PATCH] kfence: Avoid stalling...)

Marco Elver
2020-11-20T14:19:38Z

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 01:35PM -0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 08:38:19PM +0100, Marco Elver wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 10:48AM -0800, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 06:02:59PM +0100, Marco Elver wrote:
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> > > > I can try bisection again, or reverting some commits that might be
> > > > suspicious? But we'd need some selection of suspicious commits.
> > >
> > > The report claims that one of the rcu_node ->lock fields is held
> > > with interrupts enabled, which would indeed be bad. Except that all
> > > of the stack traces that it shows have these locks held within the
> > > scheduling-clock interrupt handler. Now with the "rcu: Don't invoke
> > > try_invoke_on_locked_down_task() with irqs disabled" but without the
> > > "sched/core: Allow try_invoke_on_locked_down_task() with irqs disabled"
> > > commit, I understand why. With both, I don't see how this happens.
> >
> > I'm at a loss, but happy to keep bisecting and trying patches. I'm also
> > considering:
> >
> > Is it the compiler? Probably not, I tried 2 versions of GCC.
> >
> > Can we trust lockdep to precisely know IRQ state? I know there's
> > been some recent work around this, but hopefully we're not
> > affected here?
> >
> > Is QEMU buggy?
> >
> > > At this point, I am reduced to adding lockdep_assert_irqs_disabled()
> > > calls at various points in that code, as shown in the patch below.
> > >
> > > At this point, I would guess that your first priority would be the
> > > initial bug rather than this following issue, but you never know, this
> > > might well help diagnose the initial bug.
> >
> > I don't mind either way. I'm worried deadlocking the whole system might
> > be worse.
>
> Here is another set of lockdep_assert_irqs_disabled() calls on the
> off-chance that they actually find something.
>
> Thanx, Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> commit bcca5277df3f24db15e15ccc8b05ecf346d05169
> Author: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
> Date: Thu Nov 19 13:30:33 2020 -0800
>
> rcu: Add lockdep_assert_irqs_disabled() to raw_spin_unlock_rcu_node() macros

None of those triggered either.

I found that disabling ftrace for some of kernel/rcu (see below) solved
the stalls (and any mention of deadlocks as a side-effect I assume),
resulting in successful boot.

Does that provide any additional clues? I tried to narrow it down to 1-2
files, but that doesn't seem to work.

Thanks,
-- Marco

------ >8 ------

diff --git a/kernel/rcu/Makefile b/kernel/rcu/Makefile
index 0cfb009a99b9..678b4b094f94 100644
--- a/kernel/rcu/Makefile
+++ b/kernel/rcu/Makefile
@@ -3,6 +3,13 @@
# and is generally not a function of system call inputs.
KCOV_INSTRUMENT := n

+ifdef CONFIG_FUNCTION_TRACER
+CFLAGS_REMOVE_update.o = $(CC_FLAGS_FTRACE)
+CFLAGS_REMOVE_sync.o = $(CC_FLAGS_FTRACE)
+CFLAGS_REMOVE_srcutree.o = $(CC_FLAGS_FTRACE)
+CFLAGS_REMOVE_tree.o = $(CC_FLAGS_FTRACE)
+endif
+
ifeq ($(CONFIG_KCSAN),y)
KBUILD_CFLAGS += -g -fno-omit-frame-pointer
endif