We've been dealing with a fairly nasty NFS-related problem off and on for the past couple of years. The host is a large POWER server with several external SAS arrays attached, using BTRFS for cold storage of large amounts of data. The main symptom is that under heavy sustained NFS write traffic using certain file types (see below) a core will suddenly lock up, continually spewing a backtrace similar to the one I've pasted below. While this immediately halts all NFS traffic to the affected client (which is never the same client as the machine doing the large file transfer), the larger issue is that over the next few minutes / hours the entire host will gradually degrade in responsiveness until it grinds to a complete halt. Once the core stall occurs we have been unable to find any way to restore the machine to full functionality or avoid the degradation and eventual hang short of a hard power down and restart.
Tens of GB of compressed data in a single file seems to be fairly good at triggering the problem, whereas raw disk images or other regularly patterned data tend not to be. The underlying hardware is functioning perfectly with no problems noted, and moving the files without NFS avoids the bug.
We've been using a workaround involving purposefully pausing (SIGSTOP) the file transfer process on the client as soon as other clients start to show a slowdown. This hack avoids the bug entirely provided the host is allowed to catch back up prior to resuming (SIGCONT) the file transfer process. From this, it seems something is going very wrong within the NFS stack under high storage I/O pressure and high storage write latency (timeout?) -- it should simply pause transfers while the storage subsystem catches up, not lock up a core and force a host restart. Interesting, sometimes it does exactly what it is supposed to and does pause and wait for the storage subsystem, but around 20% of the time it just triggers this bug and stalls a core.
This bug has been present since at least 4.14 and is still present in the latest 5.12.14 version.
As the machine is in production, it is difficult to gather further information or test patches, however we would be able to apply patches to the kernel that would potentially restore stability with enough advance scheduling.
Sample backtrace below:
[16846.426141] rcu: INFO: rcu_sched self-detected stall on CPU
[16846.426202] rcu: 32-....: (5249 ticks this GP) idle=78a/1/0x4000000000000002 softirq=1663878/1663878 fqs=1986
[16846.426241] (t=5251 jiffies g=2720809 q=756724)
[16846.426273] NMI backtrace for cpu 32
[16846.426298] CPU: 32 PID: 10624 Comm: kworker/u130:25 Not tainted 5.12.14 #1
[16846.426342] Workqueue: rpciod rpc_async_schedule [sunrpc]
[16846.426406] Call Trace:
[16846.426429] [c000200010823250] [c00000000074e630] dump_stack+0xc4/0x114 (unreliable)
[16846.426483] [c000200010823290] [c00000000075aebc] nmi_cpu_backtrace+0xfc/0x150
[16846.426506] [c000200010823310] [c00000000075b0a8] nmi_trigger_cpumask_backtrace+0x198/0x1f0
[16846.426577] [c0002000108233b0] [c000000000072818] arch_trigger_cpumask_backtrace+0x28/0x40
[16846.426621] [c0002000108233d0] [c000000000202db8] rcu_dump_cpu_stacks+0x158/0x1b8
[16846.426667] [c000200010823470] [c000000000201828] rcu_sched_clock_irq+0x908/0xb10
[16846.426708] [c000200010823560] [c0000000002141d0] update_process_times+0xc0/0x140
[16846.426768] [c0002000108235a0] [c00000000022dd34] tick_sched_handle.isra.18+0x34/0xd0
[16846.426808] [c0002000108235d0] [c00000000022e1e8] tick_sched_timer+0x68/0xe0
[16846.426856] [c000200010823610] [c00000000021577c] __hrtimer_run_queues+0x16c/0x370
[16846.426903] [c000200010823690] [c000000000216378] hrtimer_interrupt+0x128/0x2f0
[16846.426947] [c000200010823740] [c000000000029494] timer_interrupt+0x134/0x310
[16846.426989] [c0002000108237a0] [c000000000016c54] replay_soft_interrupts+0x124/0x2e0
[16846.427045] [c000200010823990] [c000000000016f14] arch_local_irq_restore+0x104/0x170
[16846.427103] [c0002000108239c0] [c00000000017247c] mod_delayed_work_on+0x8c/0xe0
[16846.427149] [c000200010823a20] [c00800000819fe04] rpc_set_queue_timer+0x5c/0x80 [sunrpc]
[16846.427234] [c000200010823a40] [c0080000081a096c] __rpc_sleep_on_priority_timeout+0x194/0x1b0 [sunrpc]
[16846.427324] [c000200010823a90] [c0080000081a3080] rpc_sleep_on_timeout+0x88/0x110 [sunrpc]
[16846.427388] [c000200010823ad0] [c0080000071f7220] nfsd4_cb_done+0x468/0x530 [nfsd]
[16846.427457] [c000200010823b60] [c0080000081a0a0c] rpc_exit_task+0x84/0x1d0 [sunrpc]
[16846.427520] [c000200010823ba0] [c0080000081a2448] __rpc_execute+0xd0/0x760 [sunrpc]
[16846.427598] [c000200010823c30] [c0080000081a2b18] rpc_async_schedule+0x40/0x70 [sunrpc]
[16846.427687] [c000200010823c60] [c000000000170bf0] process_one_work+0x290/0x580
[16846.427736] [c000200010823d00] [c000000000170f68] worker_thread+0x88/0x620
[16846.427813] [c000200010823da0] [c00000000017b860] kthread+0x1a0/0x1b0
[16846.427865] [c000200010823e10] [c00000000000d6ec] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x5c/0x70
[16873.869180] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#32 stuck for 49s! [kworker/u130:25:10624]
[16873.869245] Modules linked in: rpcsec_gss_krb5 iscsi_target_mod target_core_user uio target_core_pscsi target_core_file target_core_iblock target_core_mod tun nft_counter nf_tables nfnetlink vfio_pci vfio_virqfd vfio_iommu_spapr_tce vfio vfio_spapr_eeh i2c_dev bridg$
[16873.869413] linear mlx4_ib ib_uverbs ib_core raid1 md_mod sd_mod t10_pi hid_generic usbhid hid ses enclosure crct10dif_vpmsum crc32c_vpmsum xhci_pci xhci_hcd ixgbe mlx4_core mpt3sas usbcore tg3 mdio_devres of_mdio fixed_phy xfrm_algo mdio libphy aacraid igb raid_cl$
[16873.869889] CPU: 32 PID: 10624 Comm: kworker/u130:25 Not tainted 5.12.14 #1
[16873.869966] Workqueue: rpciod rpc_async_schedule [sunrpc]
[16873.870023] NIP: c000000000711300 LR: c0080000081a0708 CTR: c0000000007112a0
[16873.870073] REGS: c0002000108237d0 TRAP: 0900 Not tainted (5.12.14)
[16873.870109] MSR: 900000000280b033 <SF,HV,VEC,VSX,EE,FP,ME,IR,DR,RI,LE> CR: 24004842 XER: 00000000
[16873.870146] CFAR: c0080000081d8054 IRQMASK: 0
GPR00: c0080000081a0748 c000200010823a70 c0000000015c0700 c0000000e2227a40
GPR04: c0000000e2227a40 c0000000e2227a40 c000200ffb6cc0a8 0000000000000018
GPR08: 0000000000000000 5deadbeef0000122 c0080000081ffd18 c0080000081d8040
GPR12: c0000000007112a0 c000200fff7fee00 c00000000017b6c8 c000000090d9ccc0
GPR16: 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
GPR20: 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000040
GPR24: 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 fffffffffffffe00 0000000000000001
GPR28: c00000001a62f000 c0080000081a0988 c0080000081ffd10 c0000000e2227a00
[16873.870452] NIP [c000000000711300] __list_del_entry_valid+0x60/0x100
[16873.870507] LR [c0080000081a0708] rpc_wake_up_task_on_wq_queue_action_locked+0x330/0x400 [sunrpc]
