The patch titled Subject: kernel/watchdog.c: fix possible soft lockup warning at bootup has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was watchdog-fix-possible-soft-lockup-warning-at-bootup.patch This patch was dropped because it was nacked ------------------------------------------------------ From: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: kernel/watchdog.c: fix possible soft lockup warning at bootup It was found that watchdog soft lockup warning was displayed on a Cavium ThunderX2 Sabre arm64 system at bootup time: [ 25.496379] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#14 stuck for 22s! [swapper/14:0] [ 25.496381] Modules linked in: [ 25.496386] CPU: 14 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/14 Tainted: G W L --------- - - 4.18.0-rhel8.1+ #9 [ 25.496388] pstate: 60000009 (nZCv daif -PAN -UAO) [ 25.496393] pc : arch_cpu_idle+0x34/0x140 [ 25.496395] lr : arch_cpu_idle+0x30/0x140 [ 25.496397] sp : ffff000021f4ff10 [ 25.496398] x29: ffff000021f4ff10 x28: 0000000000000000 [ 25.496401] x27: 0000000000000000 x26: ffff809f483c0000 [ 25.496404] x25: 0000000000000000 x24: ffff00001145c03c [ 25.496407] x23: ffff00001110c9f8 x22: ffff000011453708 [ 25.496410] x21: ffff00001145bffc x20: 0000000000004000 [ 25.496413] x19: ffff0000110f0018 x18: 0000000000000010 [ 25.496416] x17: 0000000000000cc8 x16: 0000000000000000 [ 25.496419] x15: ffffffffffffffff x14: ffff000011453708 [ 25.496422] x13: ffff000091cc5caf x12: ffff000011cc5cb7 [ 25.496424] x11: 6572203030642072 x10: 0000000000000d10 [ 25.496427] x9 : ffff000021f4fe80 x8 : ffff809f483c0d70 [ 25.496430] x7 : 00000000b123f581 x6 : 00000000ffff8ae1 [ 25.496433] x5 : 00000000ffffffff x4 : 0000809f6ac90000 [ 25.496436] x3 : 4000000000000000 x2 : ffff809f7bd9e9c0 [ 25.496439] x1 : ffff0000110f0018 x0 : ffff000021f4ff10 [ 25.496441] Call trace: [ 25.496444] arch_cpu_idle+0x34/0x140 [ 25.496447] do_idle+0x210/0x288 [ 25.496449] cpu_startup_entry+0x2c/0x30 [ 25.496452] secondary_start_kernel+0x124/0x138 Further analysis of the situation revealed that the smp_init() call itself took more than 20s for that 2-socket 56-core and 224-thread server. [ 0.115632] CPU1: Booted secondary processor 0x0000000100 [0x431f0af1] : [ 27.177282] CPU223: Booted secondary processor 0x0000011b03 [0x431f0af1] By adding some instrumentation code, it was found that for cpu 14, watchdog_enable() was called early with a timestamp of 1. That activates the watchdog time checking logic. It was also found that the monotonic time measured during the smp_init() phase runs much slower than the real elapsed time as shown by the below debug printf output: [ 1.138522] run_queues, watchdog_timer_fn: now = 170000000 [ 25.519391] run_queues, watchdog_timer_fn: now = 4170000000 In this particular case, it took about 24.4s of elapsed time for the clock to advance 4s which is the soft expiration time that is required to trigger the calling of watchdog_timer_fn(). That clock slowdown stopped once the smp_init() call was done and the clock time ran at the same rate as the elapsed time afterward. On a comparable CN9980 system from HPE, there was also a bit of clock slowdown but not as much as the Cavium system: [ 1.177068] run_queues, watchdog_timer_fn: now = 1010000000 [ 5.577925] run_queues, watchdog_timer_fn: now = 5010000000 Similar clock slowdown was not observed on x86-64 systems. The clock slowdown in arm64 systems seems to be hardware specific. Given the fact that the clock is less reliable during the smp_init() call and that call can take a rather long time, one simple workaround to avoid this soft lockup problem is to move lockup_detector_init() call after smp_init() when the clock is reliable. This does fix the soft lockup problem for that Cavium system and does not seem to affect the operation of the watchdog. This is much easier than trying to fix the clock slowdown problem in smp_init() as the watchdog timer is the only timer function that can be active at such early boot stage anyway. [longman@xxxxxxxxxx: v2] Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200103151032.19590-1-longman@xxxxxxxxxx Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200102154149.7564-1-longman@xxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Waiman Long <longman@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- init/main.c | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) --- a/init/main.c~watchdog-fix-possible-soft-lockup-warning-at-bootup +++ a/init/main.c @@ -1191,9 +1191,9 @@ static noinline void __init kernel_init_ init_mm_internals(); do_pre_smp_initcalls(); - lockup_detector_init(); smp_init(); + lockup_detector_init(); sched_init_smp(); page_alloc_init_late(); _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from longman@xxxxxxxxxx are