On (10/03/18 11:37), Daniel Wang wrote: > When `softlockup_panic` is set (which is what my original repro had and > what we use in production), without the backport patch, the expected panic > would hit a seemingly deadlock. So even when the machine is configured > to reboot immediately after the panic (kernel.panic=-1), it just hangs there > with an incomplete backtrace. With your patch, the deadlock doesn't happen > and the machine reboots successfully. > > This was and still is the issue this thread is trying to fix. The last > log snippet > was from an "experiment" that I did in order to understand what's really > happening. So far the speculation has been that the panic path was trying > to get a lock held by a backtrace dumping thread, but there is not enough > evidence which thread is holding the lock and how it uses it. So I set > `softlockup_panic` to 0, to get panic out of the equation. Then I saw that one > CPU was indeed holding the console lock, trying to write something out. If > the panic was to hit while it's doing that, we might get a deadlock. Hmm, console_sem state is ignored when we flush logbuf, so it's OK to have it locked when we declare panic(): void console_flush_on_panic(void) { /* * If someone else is holding the console lock, trylock will fail * and may_schedule may be set. Ignore and proceed to unlock so * that messages are flushed out. As this can be called from any * context and we don't want to get preempted while flushing, * ensure may_schedule is cleared. */ console_trylock(); console_may_schedule = 0; console_unlock(); } Things are not so simple with uart_port lock. Generally speaking we should deadlock when we NMI panic() kills the system while one of the CPUs holds uart_port lock. 8250 has sort of a workaround for this scenario: serial8250_console_write() { if (port->sysrq) locked = 0; else if (oops_in_progress) locked = spin_trylock_irqsave(&port->lock, flags); else spin_lock_irqsave(&port->lock, flags); ... uart_console_write(port, s, count, serial8250_console_putchar); ... if (locked) spin_unlock_irqrestore(&port->lock, flags); } Note, spin_trylock_irqsave() path. So, as long as we are in sysrq or oops_in_progress, uart_port lock state is sort of ignored. Looking at your backtraces: --- [ 348.058207] NMI backtrace for cpu 8 [ 348.058207] CPU: 8 PID: 1700 Comm: dd Tainted: G O L 4.14.73 #18 [ 348.058214] <IRQ> [ 348.058214] wait_for_xmitr+0x2c/0xb0 [ 348.058215] serial8250_console_putchar+0x1c/0x40 [ 348.058215] ? wait_for_xmitr+0xb0/0xb0 [ 348.058215] uart_console_write+0x33/0x70 [ 348.058216] serial8250_console_write+0xe2/0x2b0 [ 348.058216] ? msg_print_text+0xa6/0x110 [ 348.058216] console_unlock+0x306/0x4a0 [ 348.058217] wake_up_klogd_work_func+0x55/0x60 [ 348.058217] irq_work_run_list+0x50/0x80 [ 348.058217] smp_irq_work_interrupt+0x3f/0xe0 [ 348.058218] irq_work_interrupt+0x7d/0x90 --- Now... the problem. A theory, in fact. panic() sets oops_in_progress back to zero - bust_spinlocks(0) - too soon. When we do console_flush_on_panic() we ignore console_sem state and go to the 8250 driver - serial8250_console_write(). But at this point oops_in_progress is zero, so we endup in spin_lock_irqsave(&port->lock, flags). If the port->lock was already locked, then this is your deadlock. We can't emergency_restart() because the panic() CPU stuck spinning on port->lock in serial8250_console_write(), so it never returns from console_flush_on_panic() and there is no progress. --- void panic(const char *fmt, ...) { .... bust_spinlocks(0); /* * We may have ended up stopping the CPU holding the lock (in * smp_send_stop()) while still having some valuable data in the console * buffer. Try to acquire the lock then release it regardless of the * result. The release will also print the buffers out. Locks debug * should be disabled to avoid reporting bad unlock balance when * panic() is not being callled from OOPS. */ debug_locks_off(); console_flush_on_panic(); if (!panic_blink) panic_blink = no_blink; if (panic_timeout > 0) { /* * Delay timeout seconds before rebooting the machine. * We can't use the "normal" timers since we just panicked. */ pr_emerg("Rebooting in %d seconds..\n", panic_timeout); for (i = 0; i < panic_timeout * 1000; i += PANIC_TIMER_STEP) { touch_nmi_watchdog(); if (i >= i_next) { i += panic_blink(state ^= 1); i_next = i + 3600 / PANIC_BLINK_SPD; } mdelay(PANIC_TIMER_STEP); } } if (panic_timeout != 0) { /* * This will not be a clean reboot, with everything * shutting down. But if there is a chance of * rebooting the system it will be rebooted. */ emergency_restart(); } --- So... Just an idea. Can you try a very dirty hack? Forcibly increase oops_in_progress in panic() before console_flush_on_panic(), so 8250 serial8250_console_write() will use spin_trylock_irqsave() and maybe avoid deadlock. -ss