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ring-buffer: add NMI protection for spinlocks
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Impact: prevent deadlock in NMI

The ring buffers are not yet totally lockless with writing to
the buffer. When a writer crosses a page, it grabs a per cpu spinlock
to protect against a reader. The spinlocks taken by a writer are not
to protect against other writers, since a writer can only write to
its own per cpu buffer. The spinlocks protect against readers that
can touch any cpu buffer. The writers are made to be reentrant
with the spinlocks disabling interrupts.

The problem arises when an NMI writes to the buffer, and that write
crosses a page boundary. If it grabs a spinlock, it can be racing
with another writer (since disabling interrupts does not protect
against NMIs) or with a reader on the same CPU. Luckily, most of the
users are not reentrant and protects against this issue. But if a
user of the ring buffer becomes reentrant (which is what the ring
buffers do allow), if the NMI also writes to the ring buffer then
we risk the chance of a deadlock.

This patch moves the ftrace_nmi_enter called by nmi_enter() to the
ring buffer code. It replaces the current ftrace_nmi_enter that is
used by arch specific code to arch_ftrace_nmi_enter and updates
the Kconfig to handle it.

When an NMI is called, it will set a per cpu variable in the ring buffer
code and will clear it when the NMI exits. If a write to the ring buffer
crosses page boundaries inside an NMI, a trylock is used on the spin
lock instead. If the spinlock fails to be acquired, then the entry
is discarded.

This bug appeared in the ftrace work in the RT tree, where event tracing
is reentrant. This workaround solved the deadlocks that appeared there.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
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Steven Rostedt committed Feb 8, 2009
1 parent 1830b52 commit 78d904b
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Showing 5 changed files with 68 additions and 7 deletions.
1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions arch/x86/Kconfig
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ config X86
select HAVE_FUNCTION_TRACER
select HAVE_FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER
select HAVE_FUNCTION_TRACE_MCOUNT_TEST
select HAVE_FTRACE_NMI_ENTER if DYNAMIC_FTRACE || FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER
select HAVE_KVM if ((X86_32 && !X86_VOYAGER && !X86_VISWS && !X86_NUMAQ) || X86_64)
select HAVE_ARCH_KGDB if !X86_VOYAGER
select HAVE_ARCH_TRACEHOOK
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8 changes: 4 additions & 4 deletions arch/x86/kernel/ftrace.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ static void ftrace_mod_code(void)
MCOUNT_INSN_SIZE);
}

void ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
void arch_ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
{
atomic_inc(&in_nmi);
/* Must have in_nmi seen before reading write flag */
Expand All @@ -124,7 +124,7 @@ void ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
}
}

void ftrace_nmi_exit(void)
void arch_ftrace_nmi_exit(void)
{
/* Finish all executions before clearing in_nmi */
smp_wmb();
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -376,12 +376,12 @@ int ftrace_disable_ftrace_graph_caller(void)
*/
static atomic_t in_nmi;

void ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
void arch_ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
{
atomic_inc(&in_nmi);
}

void ftrace_nmi_exit(void)
void arch_ftrace_nmi_exit(void)
{
atomic_dec(&in_nmi);
}
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10 changes: 9 additions & 1 deletion include/linux/ftrace_irq.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -2,7 +2,15 @@
#define _LINUX_FTRACE_IRQ_H


#if defined(CONFIG_DYNAMIC_FTRACE) || defined(CONFIG_FUNCTION_GRAPH_TRACER)
#ifdef CONFIG_FTRACE_NMI_ENTER
extern void arch_ftrace_nmi_enter(void);
extern void arch_ftrace_nmi_exit(void);
#else
static inline void arch_ftrace_nmi_enter(void) { }
static inline void arch_ftrace_nmi_exit(void) { }
#endif

#ifdef CONFIG_RING_BUFFER
extern void ftrace_nmi_enter(void);
extern void ftrace_nmi_exit(void);
#else
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8 changes: 8 additions & 0 deletions kernel/trace/Kconfig
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -9,6 +9,9 @@ config USER_STACKTRACE_SUPPORT
config NOP_TRACER
bool

config HAVE_FTRACE_NMI_ENTER
bool

config HAVE_FUNCTION_TRACER
bool

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -37,6 +40,11 @@ config TRACER_MAX_TRACE
config RING_BUFFER
bool

config FTRACE_NMI_ENTER
bool
depends on HAVE_FTRACE_NMI_ENTER
default y

config TRACING
bool
select DEBUG_FS
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48 changes: 46 additions & 2 deletions kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
* Copyright (C) 2008 Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
*/
#include <linux/ring_buffer.h>
#include <linux/ftrace_irq.h>
#include <linux/spinlock.h>
#include <linux/debugfs.h>
#include <linux/uaccess.h>
Expand All @@ -18,6 +19,35 @@

#include "trace.h"

/*
* Since the write to the buffer is still not fully lockless,
* we must be careful with NMIs. The locks in the writers
* are taken when a write crosses to a new page. The locks
* protect against races with the readers (this will soon
* be fixed with a lockless solution).
*
* Because we can not protect against NMIs, and we want to
* keep traces reentrant, we need to manage what happens
* when we are in an NMI.
*/
static DEFINE_PER_CPU(int, rb_in_nmi);

void ftrace_nmi_enter(void)
{
__get_cpu_var(rb_in_nmi)++;
/* call arch specific handler too */
arch_ftrace_nmi_enter();
}

void ftrace_nmi_exit(void)
{
arch_ftrace_nmi_exit();
__get_cpu_var(rb_in_nmi)--;
/* NMIs are not recursive */
WARN_ON_ONCE(__get_cpu_var(rb_in_nmi));
}


/*
* A fast way to enable or disable all ring buffers is to
* call tracing_on or tracing_off. Turning off the ring buffers
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -982,6 +1012,7 @@ __rb_reserve_next(struct ring_buffer_per_cpu *cpu_buffer,
struct ring_buffer *buffer = cpu_buffer->buffer;
struct ring_buffer_event *event;
unsigned long flags;
bool lock_taken = false;

commit_page = cpu_buffer->commit_page;
/* we just need to protect against interrupts */
Expand All @@ -995,7 +1026,19 @@ __rb_reserve_next(struct ring_buffer_per_cpu *cpu_buffer,
struct buffer_page *next_page = tail_page;

local_irq_save(flags);
__raw_spin_lock(&cpu_buffer->lock);
/*
* NMIs can happen after we take the lock.
* If we are in an NMI, only take the lock
* if it is not already taken. Otherwise
* simply fail.
*/
if (unlikely(__get_cpu_var(rb_in_nmi))) {
if (!__raw_spin_trylock(&cpu_buffer->lock))
goto out_unlock;
} else
__raw_spin_lock(&cpu_buffer->lock);

lock_taken = true;

rb_inc_page(cpu_buffer, &next_page);

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -1097,7 +1140,8 @@ __rb_reserve_next(struct ring_buffer_per_cpu *cpu_buffer,
if (tail <= BUF_PAGE_SIZE)
local_set(&tail_page->write, tail);

__raw_spin_unlock(&cpu_buffer->lock);
if (likely(lock_taken))
__raw_spin_unlock(&cpu_buffer->lock);
local_irq_restore(flags);
return NULL;
}
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