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documentation: Cover requirements controlling stall warnings 

This commit adds verbiage on boot and sysfs parameters that can be
used to control RCU CPU stall warnings, both to change the timeout
and to suppress these warnings entirely.

Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
hifive-unleashed-5.1
Paul E. McKenney 2015-10-07 15:35:35 -07:00
parent 701e80312f
commit 01d3ad3834
2 changed files with 48 additions and 2 deletions
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25
Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.html
View File

@ -1618,12 +1618,35 @@ guard against mishaps and misuse:
supplied the needed
<a href="https://lkml.kernel.org/g/20100319013024.GA28456@Krystal">patch</a>.
<li> An infinite loop in an RCU read-side critical section will
eventually trigger an RCU CPU stall warning splat.
eventually trigger an RCU CPU stall warning splat, with
the duration of &ldquo;eventually&rdquo; being controlled by the
<tt>RCU_CPU_STALL_TIMEOUT</tt> <tt>Kconfig</tt> option, or,
alternatively, by the
<tt>rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_timeout</tt> boot/sysfs
parameter.
However, RCU is not obligated to produce this splat
unless there is a grace period waiting on that particular
RCU read-side critical section.
<p>
Some extreme workloads might intentionally delay
RCU grace periods, and systems running those workloads can
be booted with <tt>rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_suppress</tt>
to suppress the splats.
This kernel parameter may also be set via <tt>sysfs</tt>.
Furthermore, RCU CPU stall warnings are counter-productive
during sysrq dumps and during panics.
RCU therefore supplies the <tt>rcu_sysrq_start()</tt> and
<tt>rcu_sysrq_end()</tt> API members to be called before
and after long sysrq dumps.
RCU also supplies the <tt>rcu_panic()</tt> notifier that is
automatically invoked at the beginning of a panic to suppress
further RCU CPU stall warnings.
<p>
This requirement made itself known in the early 1990s, pretty
much the first time that it was necessary to debug a CPU stall.
That said, the initial implementation in DYNIX/ptx was quite
generic in comparison with that of Linux.
<li> Although it would be very good to detect pointers leaking out
of RCU read-side critical sections, there is currently no
good way of doing this.

25
Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.htmlx
View File

@ -1777,12 +1777,35 @@ guard against mishaps and misuse:
supplied the needed
<a href="https://lkml.kernel.org/g/20100319013024.GA28456@Krystal">patch</a>.
<li> An infinite loop in an RCU read-side critical section will
eventually trigger an RCU CPU stall warning splat.
eventually trigger an RCU CPU stall warning splat, with
the duration of &ldquo;eventually&rdquo; being controlled by the
<tt>RCU_CPU_STALL_TIMEOUT</tt> <tt>Kconfig</tt> option, or,
alternatively, by the
<tt>rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_timeout</tt> boot/sysfs
parameter.
However, RCU is not obligated to produce this splat
unless there is a grace period waiting on that particular
RCU read-side critical section.
<p>
Some extreme workloads might intentionally delay
RCU grace periods, and systems running those workloads can
be booted with <tt>rcupdate.rcu_cpu_stall_suppress</tt>
to suppress the splats.
This kernel parameter may also be set via <tt>sysfs</tt>.
Furthermore, RCU CPU stall warnings are counter-productive
during sysrq dumps and during panics.
RCU therefore supplies the <tt>rcu_sysrq_start()</tt> and
<tt>rcu_sysrq_end()</tt> API members to be called before
and after long sysrq dumps.
RCU also supplies the <tt>rcu_panic()</tt> notifier that is
automatically invoked at the beginning of a panic to suppress
further RCU CPU stall warnings.
<p>
This requirement made itself known in the early 1990s, pretty
much the first time that it was necessary to debug a CPU stall.
That said, the initial implementation in DYNIX/ptx was quite
generic in comparison with that of Linux.
<li> Although it would be very good to detect pointers leaking out
of RCU read-side critical sections, there is currently no
good way of doing this.