From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> To: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>, Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>, Tony Luck <tony.luck@gmail.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-arch@vger.kernel.org, tglx@linutronix.de, mingo@elte.hu, greg@kroah.com, akpm@linux-foundation.org, ying.huang@intel.com, David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>, Jim Keniston <jkenisto@linux.vnet.ibm.com>, Kyungmin Park <kmpark@infradead.org>, Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@linux-m68k.org> Subject: Re: [concept & "good taste" review] persistent store Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:18:25 -0800 [thread overview] Message-ID: <AANLkTikhbxs-FU2qjpup17QDd67R78puMNvP4GNRwiKX@mail.gmail.com> (raw) In-Reply-To: <20101220072632.GA28020@liondog.tnic> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> wrote: > > IOW, the simple (maybe too simple) algo of the pstore could be something > like: Simple? > 1. Got a relevant message from kernel, log it. > > 2. Am I still alive? Umm. The "am I still alive" question is traditionally called "the stopping problem", and is considered to be the traditional example of _least_ simple problem there is. As in "fundamentally unsolvable". Did we kill X? Did we happen to hold some critical lock when oopsing? Was it syslogd itself that died and caused nothing further to be saved, even if the machine otherwise seems to be fine? Or did the filesystem go into read-only mode due to the problem and the rest of the system is fine, but the disk is never going to see the messages? In other words, the problem really is that "am I still alive" thing. That's a seriously impossible question to answer. What _can_ be answered is "did somebody write out the oops, then fsync, and then notify us about it?" But without explicit notification of "yeah, it really is saved off somewhere else", we really can't tell. We could do heuristics, of course, and they might even work in practice (like "flush after half an hour if there has been actual work done and the machine is clearly making progress"). Linus
WARNING: multiple messages have this Message-ID (diff)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> To: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>, Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>, Tony Luck <tony.luck@gmail.com>, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>lin Subject: Re: [concept & "good taste" review] persistent store Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:18:25 -0800 [thread overview] Message-ID: <AANLkTikhbxs-FU2qjpup17QDd67R78puMNvP4GNRwiKX@mail.gmail.com> (raw) In-Reply-To: <20101220072632.GA28020@liondog.tnic> On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> wrote: > > IOW, the simple (maybe too simple) algo of the pstore could be something > like: Simple? > 1. Got a relevant message from kernel, log it. > > 2. Am I still alive? Umm. The "am I still alive" question is traditionally called "the stopping problem", and is considered to be the traditional example of _least_ simple problem there is. As in "fundamentally unsolvable". Did we kill X? Did we happen to hold some critical lock when oopsing? Was it syslogd itself that died and caused nothing further to be saved, even if the machine otherwise seems to be fine? Or did the filesystem go into read-only mode due to the problem and the rest of the system is fine, but the disk is never going to see the messages? In other words, the problem really is that "am I still alive" thing. That's a seriously impossible question to answer. What _can_ be answered is "did somebody write out the oops, then fsync, and then notify us about it?" But without explicit notification of "yeah, it really is saved off somewhere else", we really can't tell. We could do heuristics, of course, and they might even work in practice (like "flush after half an hour if there has been actual work done and the machine is clearly making progress"). Linus
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-12-20 17:24 UTC|newest] Thread overview: 37+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top 2010-12-13 18:16 [concept & "good taste" review] persistent store Luck, Tony 2010-12-17 1:57 ` Linus Torvalds 2010-12-17 6:28 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-17 18:09 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-17 18:19 ` James Bottomley 2010-12-17 21:38 ` Linus Torvalds 2010-12-17 23:08 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-17 23:11 ` H. Peter Anvin 2010-12-17 23:53 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-18 18:23 ` Linus Torvalds 2010-12-18 23:06 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-19 9:17 ` Borislav Petkov 2010-12-19 17:01 ` Florian Mickler 2010-12-19 20:17 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-19 20:17 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-20 2:47 ` Huang Ying 2010-12-20 17:19 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-21 0:48 ` Huang Ying 2010-12-21 5:13 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-21 7:42 ` Borislav Petkov 2010-12-20 7:26 ` Borislav Petkov 2010-12-20 17:18 ` Linus Torvalds [this message] 2010-12-20 17:18 ` Linus Torvalds 2010-12-20 18:58 ` Borislav Petkov 2010-12-20 21:09 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-20 21:09 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-20 10:46 ` David Howells 2010-12-21 0:41 ` Huang Ying 2010-12-21 10:10 ` David Howells 2010-12-22 0:26 ` Huang Ying 2010-12-22 0:53 ` david 2010-12-22 7:34 ` Tony Luck 2010-12-22 0:32 ` David Howells 2010-12-22 0:32 ` David Howells 2010-12-22 0:43 ` Huang Ying 2010-12-20 10:49 ` David Howells 2010-12-20 16:52 ` Tony Luck
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