On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 6:24 AM, Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/04/13 14:04, Andre Przywara wrote:
>> kvm_target_cpus() checks the compatibility of the used CPU with
>> KVM, which is currently limited to ARM Cortex-A15 cores.
>> However by calling it only once on any random CPU it assumes that
>> all cores are the same, which is not true for big.LITTLE parts.
>>
>> After doing about 40 boots on a TC-2 core tile, I found it running
>> in all but one case on one of the A7 cores (which correctly denied
>> KVM initialization). On the 39th boot however the code ran on
>> an A15, leading to a hang after returning success:
>>
>> ...
>> TCP: reno registered
>> UDP hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
>> UDP-Lite hash table entries: 512 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
>> NET: Registered protocol family 1
>> kvm_target_cpu() on CPU #1, part is c0f0
>> ... (pause for a while) ...
>> INFO: rcu_sched self-detected stall on CPUINFO: rcu_sched detected stalls on CPU
>> s/tasks: { 1} (detected by 0, t=6002 jiffies, g=4294966999, c=4294966998, q=15)
>> Task dump for CPU 1:
>> swapper/0 R running 0 1 0 0x00000002
>>
>> So iterate over every CPU to correctly determine the capability of
>> the system to run the current KVM implementation.
>> In case a big.LITTLE configuration is the reason for denial, give
>> the user a hint how to get it running anyway (maxcpus= on the kernel
>> command line).
>>
>> Please push this still into 3.9.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Andre Przywara <andre.przywara@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> [...]
>
> Nak. The fact that one of the CPUs seem to hang is a sure sign that
> something is severely broken, and you definitely want to fix that issue,
> instead of blindly ignoring it.
>
> Additionally, it seems you're just papering over the issue. You should
> be able to exclude the A7 processors, but not completely deny KVM from
> running on the hardware.
>
Marc, I disagree with this nak. If the current kernel breaks boot on a
Big.Little system, we need to take care of that first, and the
proposed patch is a quick way to do so, and it does not stand in the
way of introducing proper Big.Little support in any way, which I'm
sure is going to open up a lot of other interesting questions.
I'm going to take this one.
-Christoffer
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