[PATCH 24/30] panic: Refactor the panic path

[Guilherme G. Piccoli <gpiccoli@igalia.com>]

On 16/05/2022 07:21, Petr Mladek wrote:
> [...]
> Ah, it should have been:
> 
>      + notifiers vs. kmsg_dump
>      + notifiers vs. crash_dump
>      + crash_dump vs. kmsg_dump
> 
> I am sorry for the confusion. Even "crash_dump" is slightly
> misleading because there is no function with this name.
> But it seems to be easier to understand than __crash_kexec().

Cool, thanks! Now it's totally clear for me =)
I feel crash dump is the proper term, but I personally prefer kdump to
avoid mess-up with user space "core dump" concept heheh
Also, KDUMP is an entry on MAINTAINERS file.


> [...]
>> Heheh OK, I appreciate your opinion, but I guess we'll need to agree in
>> disagree here - I'm much more fond to this kind of code than a bunch of
>> if/else blocks that almost give headaches. Encoding such "level" logic
>> in the if/else scheme is very convoluted, generates a very big code. And
>> the functions aren't so black magic - they map a level in bits, and the
>> functions _once() are called...once! Although we switch the position in
>> the code, so there are 2 calls, one of them is called and the other not.
> 
> I see. Well, I would consider this as a warning that the approach is
> too complex. If the code, using if/then/else, would cause headaches
> then also understanding of the behavior would cause headaches for
> both users and programmers.
> 
> 
>> But that's totally fine to change - especially if we're moving away from
>> the "level" logic. I see below you propose a much simpler approach - if
>> we follow that, definitely we won't need the "black magic" approach heheh
> 
> I do not say that my proposal is fully correct. But we really need
> this kind of simpler approach.

It's cool, I agree that your idea is much simpler and makes sense - mine
seems to be an over-engineering effort. Let's see the opinions of the
interested parties, I'm curious to see if everybody agrees here, that'd
would be ideal (and kind of "wishful thinking" I guess heheh - panic
path is polemic).


> [...] 
>> Here we have a very important point. Why do we need 2 variants of SMP
>> CPU stopping functions? I disagree with that - my understanding of this
>> after some study in architectures is that the crash_() variant is
>> "stronger", should work in all cases and if not, we should fix that -
>> that'd be a bug.
>>
>> Such variant either maps to smp_send_stop() (in various architectures,
>> including XEN/x86) or overrides the basic function with more proper
>> handling for panic() case...I don't see why we still need such
>> distinction, if you / others have some insight about that, I'd like to
>> hear =)
> 
> The two variants were introduced by the commit 0ee59413c967c35a6dd
> ("x86/panic: replace smp_send_stop() with kdump friendly version in
> panic path")
> 
> It points to https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/24/44 that talks about
> still running watchdogs.
> 
> It is possible that the problem could be fixed another way. It is
> even possible that it has already been fixed by the notifiers
> that disable the watchdogs.
> 
> Anyway, any change of the smp_send_stop() behavior should be done
> in a separate patch. It will help with bisection of possible
> regression. Also it would require a good explanation in
> the commit message. I would personally do it in a separate
> patch(set).

Thanks for the archeology and interesting findings. I agree that is
better to split in smaller patches. I'm planning a split in 3 patches
for V2: clean-up (comment, console flushing idea, useless header), the
refactor itself and finally, this SMP change.


> [...] 
>> You had the order of panic_reboot_list VS. consoles flushing inverted.
>> It might make sense, although I didn't do that in V1...
> 
> IMHO, it makes sense:
> 
>   1. panic_reboot_list contains notifiers that do the reboot
>      immediately, for example, xen_panic_event, alpha_panic_event.
>      The consoles have to be flushed earlier.
> 
>   2. console_flush_on_panic() ignores the result of console_trylock()
>      and always calls console_unlock(). As a result the lock should
>      be unlocked at the end. And any further printk() should be able
>      to printk the messages to the console immediately. It means
>      that any messages printed by the reboot notifiers should appear
>      on the console as well.
> [...] 
>> OK, I agree with you! It's indeed simpler and if others agree, I can
>> happily change the logic to what you proposed. Although...currently the
>> "crash_kexec_post_notifiers" allows to call _all_ panic_reboot_list
>> callbacks _before kdump_.
>>
>> We need to mention this change in the commit messages, but I really
>> would like to hear the opinions of heavy users of notifiers (as
>> Michael/Hyper-V) and the kdump interested parties (like Baoquan / Dave
>> Young / Hayatama). If we all agree on such approach, will change that
>> for V2 =)
> 
> Sure, we need to make sure that we call everything that is needed.
> And it should be documented.
> 
> I believe that this is the right way because:
> 
>   + It was actually the motivation for this patchset. We split
>     the notifiers into separate lists because we want to call
>     only the really needed ones before kmsg_dump and crash_dump.
> 
>   + If anything is needed for crash_dump that it should be called
>     even when crash_dump is called first. It should be either
>     hardcoded into crash_dump() or we would need another notifier
>     list that will be always called before crash_dump.

Ack, makes sense! Will do that in V2 =)

For the "hardcoded" part, we have the custom machine_crash_kexec() in
some archs (like x86), unfortunately not in all of them - this path is
ideally for mandatory code that is required for a successful crash_kexec().

The problem is the "same old, same old" - architecture folks push that
to panic notifiers; notifiers folks push it to the arch custom shutdown
handler (see [0] heheh).
(CCed Marc / Mark in case they want to chime-in here...)


>[...] 
> Thanks a lot for working on this.
> 
> Best Regards,
> Petr


You're welcome, _thank you_ for the great and detailed reviews!
Cheers,


Guilherme


[0]
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/427a8277-49f0-4317-d6c3-4a15d7070e55 at igalia.com/