The patch titled Subject: watchdog/softlockup: remove logic that tried to prevent repeated reports has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is watchdog-softlockup-remove-logic-that-tried-to-prevent-repeated-reports.patch This patch should soon appear at https://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/watchdog-softlockup-remove-logic-that-tried-to-prevent-repeated-reports.patch and later at https://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/watchdog-softlockup-remove-logic-that-tried-to-prevent-repeated-reports.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/process/submit-checklist.rst when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Petr Mladek <pmladek@xxxxxxxx> Subject: watchdog/softlockup: remove logic that tried to prevent repeated reports The softlockup detector does some gymnastic with the variable soft_watchdog_warn. It was added by the commit 58687acba59266735ad ("lockup_detector: Combine nmi_watchdog and softlockup detector"). The purpose is not completely clear. There are the following clues. They describe the situation how it looked after the above mentioned commit: 1. The variable was checked with a comment "only warn once". 2. The variable was set when softlockup was reported. It was cleared only when the CPU was not longer in the softlockup state. 3. watchdog_touch_ts was not explicitly updated when the softlockup was reported. Without this variable, the report would normally be printed again during every following watchdog_timer_fn() invocation. The logic has got even more tangled up by the commit ed235875e2ca98 ("kernel/watchdog.c: print traces for all cpus on lockup detection"). After this commit, soft_watchdog_warn is set only when softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace is enabled. But multiple reports from all CPUs are prevented by a new variable soft_lockup_nmi_warn. Conclusion: The variable probably never worked as intended. In each case, it has not worked last many years because the softlockup was reported repeatedly after the full period defined by watchdog_thresh. The reason is that watchdog gets touched in many known slow paths, for example, in printk_stack_address(). This code is called also when printing the softlockup report. It means that the watchdog timestamp gets updated after each report. Solution: Simply remove the logic. People want the periodic report anyway. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210311122130.6788-5-pmladek@xxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Laurence Oberman <loberman@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Vincent Whitchurch <vincent.whitchurch@xxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/watchdog.c | 14 ++------------ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/watchdog.c~watchdog-softlockup-remove-logic-that-tried-to-prevent-repeated-reports +++ a/kernel/watchdog.c @@ -179,7 +179,6 @@ static DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, wat static DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, watchdog_report_ts); static DEFINE_PER_CPU(struct hrtimer, watchdog_hrtimer); static DEFINE_PER_CPU(bool, softlockup_touch_sync); -static DEFINE_PER_CPU(bool, soft_watchdog_warn); static DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, hrtimer_interrupts); static DEFINE_PER_CPU(unsigned long, hrtimer_interrupts_saved); static unsigned long soft_lockup_nmi_warn; @@ -410,19 +409,12 @@ static enum hrtimer_restart watchdog_tim if (kvm_check_and_clear_guest_paused()) return HRTIMER_RESTART; - /* only warn once */ - if (__this_cpu_read(soft_watchdog_warn) == true) - return HRTIMER_RESTART; - if (softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace) { /* Prevent multiple soft-lockup reports if one cpu is already * engaged in dumping cpu back traces */ - if (test_and_set_bit(0, &soft_lockup_nmi_warn)) { - /* Someone else will report us. Let's give up */ - __this_cpu_write(soft_watchdog_warn, true); + if (test_and_set_bit(0, &soft_lockup_nmi_warn)) return HRTIMER_RESTART; - } } /* Start period for the next softlockup warning. */ @@ -452,9 +444,7 @@ static enum hrtimer_restart watchdog_tim add_taint(TAINT_SOFTLOCKUP, LOCKDEP_STILL_OK); if (softlockup_panic) panic("softlockup: hung tasks"); - __this_cpu_write(soft_watchdog_warn, true); - } else - __this_cpu_write(soft_watchdog_warn, false); + } return HRTIMER_RESTART; } _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from pmladek@xxxxxxxx are watchdog-rename-__touch_watchdog-to-a-better-descriptive-name.patch watchdog-explicitly-update-timestamp-when-reporting-softlockup.patch watchdog-softlockup-report-the-overall-time-of-softlockups.patch watchdog-softlockup-remove-logic-that-tried-to-prevent-repeated-reports.patch watchdog-fix-barriers-when-printing-backtraces-from-all-cpus.patch watchdog-cleanup-handling-of-false-positives.patch