1. 30 Oct, 2008 1 commit
    • Steven Rostedt's avatar
      ftrace: nmi safe code modification · 17666f02
      Steven Rostedt authored
      
      Impact: fix crashes that can occur in NMI handlers, if their code is modified
      
      Modifying code is something that needs special care. On SMP boxes,
      if code that is being modified is also being executed on another CPU,
      that CPU will have undefined results.
      
      The dynamic ftrace uses kstop_machine to make the system act like a
      uniprocessor system. But this does not address NMIs, that can still
      run on other CPUs.
      
      One approach to handle this is to make all code that are used by NMIs
      not be traced. But NMIs can call notifiers that spread throughout the
      kernel and this will be very hard to maintain, and the chance of missing
      a function is very high.
      
      The approach that this patch takes is to have the NMIs modify the code
      if the modification is taking place. The way this works is that just
      writing to code executing on another CPU is not harmful if what is
      written is the same as what exists.
      
      Two buffers are used: an IP buffer and a "code" buffer.
      
      The steps that the patcher takes are:
      
       1) Put in the instruction pointer into the IP buffer
          and the new code into the "code" buffer.
       2) Set a flag that says we are modifying code
       3) Wait for any running NMIs to finish.
       4) Write the code
       5) clear the flag.
       6) Wait for any running NMIs to finish.
      
      If an NMI is executed, it will also write the pending code.
      Multiple writes are OK, because what is being written is the same.
      Then the patcher must wait for all running NMIs to finish before
      going to the next line that must be patched.
      
      This is basically the RCU approach to code modification.
      
      Thanks to Ingo Molnar for suggesting the idea, and to Arjan van de Ven
      for his guidence on what is safe and what is not.
      Signed-off-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      17666f02
  2. 10 May, 2008 1 commit
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      BKL: revert back to the old spinlock implementation · 8e3e076c
      Linus Torvalds authored
      The generic semaphore rewrite had a huge performance regression on AIM7
      (and potentially other BKL-heavy benchmarks) because the generic
      semaphores had been rewritten to be simple to understand and fair.  The
      latter, in particular, turns a semaphore-based BKL implementation into a
      mess of scheduling.
      
      The attempt to fix the performance regression failed miserably (see the
      previous commit 00b41ec2
      
       'Revert
      "semaphore: fix"'), and so for now the simple and sane approach is to
      instead just go back to the old spinlock-based BKL implementation that
      never had any issues like this.
      
      This patch also has the advantage of being reported to fix the
      regression completely according to Yanmin Zhang, unlike the semaphore
      hack which still left a couple percentage point regression.
      
      As a spinlock, the BKL obviously has the potential to be a latency
      issue, but it's not really any different from any other spinlock in that
      respect.  We do want to get rid of the BKL asap, but that has been the
      plan for several years.
      
      These days, the biggest users are in the tty layer (open/release in
      particular) and Alan holds out some hope:
      
        "tty release is probably a few months away from getting cured - I'm
         afraid it will almost certainly be the very last user of the BKL in
         tty to get fixed as it depends on everything else being sanely locked."
      
      so while we're not there yet, we do have a plan of action.
      Tested-by: default avatarYanmin Zhang <yanmin_zhang@linux.intel.com>
      Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
      Cc: Matthew Wilcox <matthew@wil.cx>
      Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>
      Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
      8e3e076c
  3. 28 Mar, 2008 1 commit
  4. 29 Feb, 2008 1 commit
  5. 25 Jan, 2008 1 commit
  6. 09 Jul, 2007 1 commit
  7. 16 Feb, 2007 2 commits
  8. 04 Oct, 2006 1 commit
    • Eric W. Biederman's avatar
      [PATCH] genirq: irq: generalize the check for HARDIRQ_BITS · 23d0b8b0
      Eric W. Biederman authored
      
      This patch adds support for systems that cannot receive every interrupt on a
      single cpu simultaneously, in the check to see if we have enough HARDIRQ_BITS.
      
      MAX_HARDIRQS_PER_CPU becomes the count of the maximum number of hardare
      generated interrupts per cpu.
      
      On architectures that support per cpu interrupt delivery this can be a
      significant space savings and scalability bonus.
      
      This patch adds support for systems that cannot receive every interrupt on
      Signed-off-by: default avatarEric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
      Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
      Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
      Cc: Rajesh Shah <rajesh.shah@intel.com>
      Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>
      Cc: "Protasevich, Natalie" <Natalie.Protasevich@UNISYS.com>
      Cc: "Luck, Tony" <tony.luck@intel.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
      23d0b8b0
  9. 03 Jul, 2006 2 commits
    • Ingo Molnar's avatar
      [PATCH] lockdep: core · fbb9ce95
      Ingo Molnar authored
      Do 'make oldconfig' and accept all the defaults for new config options -
      reboot into the kernel and if everything goes well it should boot up fine and
      you should have /proc/lockdep and /proc/lockdep_stats files.
      
      Typically if the lock validator finds some problem it will print out
      voluminous debug output that begins with "BUG: ..." and which syslog output
      can be used by kernel developers to figure out the precise locking scenario.
      
      What does the lock validator do?  It "observes" and maps all locking rules as
      they occur dynamically (as triggered by the kernel's natural use of spinlocks,
      rwlocks, mutexes and rwsems).  Whenever the lock validator subsystem detects a
      new locking scenario, it validates this new rule against the existing set of
      rules.  If this new rule is consistent with the existing set of rules then the
      new rule is added transparently and the kernel continues as normal.  If the
      new rule could create a deadlock scenario then this condition is printed out.
      
      When determining validity of locking, all possible "deadlock scenarios" are
      considered: assuming arbitrary number of CPUs, arbitrary irq context and task
      context constellations, running arbitrary combinations of all the existing
      locking scenarios.  In a typical system this means millions of separate
      scenarios.  This is why we call it a "locking correctness" validator - for all
      rules that are observed the lock validator proves it with mathematical
      certainty that a deadlock could not occur (assuming that the lock validator
      implementation itself is correct and its internal data structures are not
      corrupted by some other kernel subsystem).  [see more details and conditionals
      of this statement in include/linux/lockdep.h and
      Documentation/lockdep-design.txt]
      
      Furthermore, this "all possible scenarios" property of the validator also
      enables the finding of complex, highly unlikely multi-CPU multi-context races
      via single single-context rules, increasing the likelyhood of finding bugs
      drastically.  In practical terms: the lock validator already found a bug in
      the upstream kernel that could only occur on systems with 3 or more CPUs, and
      which needed 3 very unlikely code sequences to occur at once on the 3 CPUs.
      That bug was found and reported on a single-CPU system (!).  So in essence a
      race will be found "piecemail-wise", triggering all the necessary components
      for the race, without having to reproduce the race scenario itself!  In its
      short existence the lock validator found and reported many bugs before they
      actually caused a real deadlock.
      
      To further increase the efficiency of the validator, the mapping is not per
      "lock instance", but per "lock-class".  For example, all struct inode objects
      in the kernel have inode->inotify_mutex.  If there are 10,000 inodes cached,
      then there are 10,000 lock objects.  But ->inotify_mutex is a single "lock
      type", and all locking activities that occur against ->inotify_mutex are
      "unified" into this single lock-class.  The advantage of the lock-class
      approach is that all historical ->inotify_mutex uses are mapped into a single
      (and as narrow as possible) set of locking rules - regardless of how many
      different tasks or inode structures it took to build this set of rules.  The
      set of rules persist during the lifetime of the kernel.
      
      To see the rough magnitude of checking that the lock validator does, here's a
      portion of /proc/lockdep_stats, fresh after bootup:
      
       lock-classes:                            694 [max: 2048]
       direct dependencies:                  1598 [max: 8192]
       indirect dependencies:               17896
       all direct dependencies:             16206
       dependency chains:                    1910 [max: 8192]
       in-hardirq chains:                      17
       in-softirq chains:                     105
       in-process chains:                    1065
       stack-trace entries:                 38761 [max: 131072]
       combined max dependencies:         2033928
       hardirq-safe locks:                     24
       hardirq-unsafe locks:                  176
       softirq-safe locks:                     53
       softirq-unsafe locks:                  137
       irq-safe locks:                         59
       irq-unsafe locks:                      176
      
      The lock validator has observed 1598 actual single-thread locking patterns,
      and has validated all possible 2033928 distinct locking scenarios.
      
      More details about the design of the lock validator can be found in
      Documentation/lockdep-design.txt, which can also found at:
      
         http://redhat.com/~mingo/lockdep-patches/lockdep-design.txt
      
      
      
      [bunk@stusta.de: cleanups]
      Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarArjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarAdrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
      fbb9ce95
    • Ingo Molnar's avatar
      [PATCH] lockdep: irqtrace subsystem, core · de30a2b3
      Ingo Molnar authored
      
      Accurate hard-IRQ-flags and softirq-flags state tracing.
      
      This allows us to attach extra functionality to IRQ flags on/off
      events (such as trace-on/off).
      Signed-off-by: default avatarIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarArjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
      Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
      de30a2b3
  10. 26 Apr, 2006 1 commit
  11. 14 Jan, 2006 1 commit
  12. 13 Nov, 2005 1 commit
  13. 12 Jul, 2005 1 commit
  14. 28 May, 2005 1 commit
  15. 16 Apr, 2005 1 commit
    • Linus Torvalds's avatar
      Linux-2.6.12-rc2 · 1da177e4
      Linus Torvalds authored
      Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
      even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
      archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
      3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
      git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
      infrastructure for it.
      
      Let it rip!
      1da177e4