This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled kernel/watchdog.c: remove preemption restrictions when restarting lockup detector to the 3.15-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: kernel-watchdog.c-remove-preemption-restrictions-when-restarting-lockup-detector.patch and it can be found in the queue-3.15 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From bde92cf455a03a91badb7046855592d8c008e929 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Don Zickus <dzickus@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2014 13:22:03 -0700 Subject: kernel/watchdog.c: remove preemption restrictions when restarting lockup detector From: Don Zickus <dzickus@xxxxxxxxxx> commit bde92cf455a03a91badb7046855592d8c008e929 upstream. Peter Wu noticed the following splat on his machine when updating /proc/sys/kernel/watchdog_thresh: BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at mm/slub.c:965 in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, pid: 1, name: init 3 locks held by init/1: #0: (sb_writers#3){.+.+.+}, at: [<ffffffff8117b663>] vfs_write+0x143/0x180 #1: (watchdog_proc_mutex){+.+.+.}, at: [<ffffffff810e02d3>] proc_dowatchdog+0x33/0x110 #2: (cpu_hotplug.lock){.+.+.+}, at: [<ffffffff810589c2>] get_online_cpus+0x32/0x80 Preemption disabled at:[<ffffffff810e0384>] proc_dowatchdog+0xe4/0x110 CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: init Not tainted 3.16.0-rc1-testing #34 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS Bochs 01/01/2011 Call Trace: dump_stack+0x4e/0x7a __might_sleep+0x11d/0x190 kmem_cache_alloc_trace+0x4e/0x1e0 perf_event_alloc+0x55/0x440 perf_event_create_kernel_counter+0x26/0xe0 watchdog_nmi_enable+0x75/0x140 update_timers_all_cpus+0x53/0xa0 proc_dowatchdog+0xe4/0x110 proc_sys_call_handler+0xb3/0xc0 proc_sys_write+0x14/0x20 vfs_write+0xad/0x180 SyS_write+0x49/0xb0 system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b NMI watchdog: disabled (cpu0): hardware events not enabled What happened is after updating the watchdog_thresh, the lockup detector is restarted to utilize the new value. Part of this process involved disabling preemption. Once preemption was disabled, perf tried to allocate a new event (as part of the restart). This caused the above BUG_ON as you can't sleep with preemption disabled. The preemption restriction seemed agressive as we are not doing anything on that particular cpu, but with all the online cpus (which are protected by the get_online_cpus lock). Remove the restriction and the BUG_ON goes away. Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxx> Reported-by: Peter Wu <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Tested-by: Peter Wu <peter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/watchdog.c | 2 -- 1 file changed, 2 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/watchdog.c +++ b/kernel/watchdog.c @@ -527,10 +527,8 @@ static void update_timers_all_cpus(void) int cpu; get_online_cpus(); - preempt_disable(); for_each_online_cpu(cpu) update_timers(cpu); - preempt_enable(); put_online_cpus(); } Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from dzickus@xxxxxxxxxx are queue-3.15/kernel-watchdog.c-remove-preemption-restrictions-when-restarting-lockup-detector.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe stable" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html