Kernel oops in sym_int_sir

Kernel oops in sym_int_sir

[Stefan Bader]

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While looking at a bug report [1] I found that the immediate cause of the crash
was in that specific case the reference cp->cmd for a printk:

/*
  * The device didn't switch to MSG IN phase after
  * having reselected the initiator.
  */
 case SIR_RESEL_NO_MSG_IN:
         scmd_printk(KERN_WARNING, cp->cmd,
                         "No MSG IN phase after reselection\n");
         goto out_stuck;

Unfortunately cp (that is returned by sym_ccb_from_dsa()) is NULL. This probably
is as old as 2.6.24 when this patch added the scmd_printk:

commit 3fb364e089e05c35ead55a08d56d3004193681f6
Author: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
Date: Fri Oct 5 15:55:10 2007 -0400

    [SCSI] sym53c8xx: Use scmd_printk where appropriate

A quick research looks like it might be other cases where this happened[2].
Maybe more often (or solely?) when running in a VM (KVM). I even found some post
that looks like it tries to fix just this problem[3].

However without more knowledge about that driver it could also be a problem in
the hardware emulation so that normally cp == NULL should never happen. Or it
might be that the emulation is just running sufficiently "different" to cause
races to happen which never would be observed on real hardware.

Would [3] still make sense?

Thanks,
Stefan


[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/992328
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/kvm@vger.kernel.org/msg08927.html
[3] https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/11/18/495


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Re: Kernel oops in sym_int_sir

[Hannes Reinecke]

On 05/02/2012 04:25 PM, Stefan Bader wrote:
> While looking at a bug report [1] I found that the immediate cause of the crash
> was in that specific case the reference cp->cmd for a printk:
> 
> /*
>   * The device didn't switch to MSG IN phase after
>   * having reselected the initiator.
>   */
>  case SIR_RESEL_NO_MSG_IN:
>          scmd_printk(KERN_WARNING, cp->cmd,
>                          "No MSG IN phase after reselection\n");
>          goto out_stuck;
> 
> Unfortunately cp (that is returned by sym_ccb_from_dsa()) is NULL. This probably
> is as old as 2.6.24 when this patch added the scmd_printk:
> 
> commit 3fb364e089e05c35ead55a08d56d3004193681f6
> Author: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
> Date: Fri Oct 5 15:55:10 2007 -0400
> 
>     [SCSI] sym53c8xx: Use scmd_printk where appropriate
> 
> A quick research looks like it might be other cases where this happened[2].
> Maybe more often (or solely?) when running in a VM (KVM). I even found some post
> that looks like it tries to fix just this problem[3].
> 
> However without more knowledge about that driver it could also be a problem in
> the hardware emulation so that normally cp == NULL should never happen. Or it
> might be that the emulation is just running sufficiently "different" to cause
> races to happen which never would be observed on real hardware.
> 
> Would [3] still make sense?
> 
cp->cmd == NULL would point to a race with SCSI command completion,
basically the same issue USB is facing right now.
So yes, it can happen (as you've seen), so I would got for [3].
And if only to avoid the Oops and figure out what _really_ went
wrong here.

Cheers,

Hannes
-- 
Dr. Hannes Reinecke		      zSeries & Storage
hare@suse.de			      +49 911 74053 688
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