Re: [PATCH] ACPI/APEI: Limit printable size of BERT table data

["Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 7:51 PM Darren Hart
<darren@os.amperecomputing.com> wrote:
>
> Platforms with large BERT table data can trigger soft lockup errors
> while attempting to print the entire BERT table data to the console at
> boot:
>
>   watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#160 stuck for 23s! [swapper/0:1]
>
> Observed on Ampere Altra systems with a single BERT record of ~250KB.
>
> The original bert driver appears to have assumed relatively small table
> data. Since it is impractical to reassemble large table data from
> interwoven console messages, and the table data is available in
>
>   /sys/firmware/acpi/tables/data/BERT
>
> limit the size for tables printed to the console to 1024 (for no reason
> other than it seemed like a good place to kick off the discussion, would
> appreciate feedback from existing users in terms of what size would
> maintain their current usage model).
>
> Alternatively, we could make printing a CONFIG option, use the
> bert_disable boot arg (or something similar), or use a debug log level.
> However, all those solutions require extra steps or change the existing
> behavior for small table data. Limiting the size preserves existing
> behavior on existing platforms with small table data, and eliminates the
> soft lockups for platforms with large table data, while still making it
> available.
>
> Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rafael@kernel.org>
> Cc: Len Brown <lenb@kernel.org>
> Cc: James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>
> Cc: Tony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
> Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
> Cc: Doug Rady <dcrady@os.amperecomputing.com>
> Signed-off-by: Darren Hart <darren@os.amperecomputing.com>

Not that I have a particularly strong opinion here, but this looks
reasonable to me, so I've queued it up for 5.18.

APEI reviewers, please chime in if you disagree with the above.

> ---
>  drivers/acpi/apei/bert.c | 8 ++++++--
>  1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/drivers/acpi/apei/bert.c b/drivers/acpi/apei/bert.c
> index 19e50fcbf4d6..ad8ab3f12cf3 100644
> --- a/drivers/acpi/apei/bert.c
> +++ b/drivers/acpi/apei/bert.c
> @@ -29,6 +29,7 @@
>
>  #undef pr_fmt
>  #define pr_fmt(fmt) "BERT: " fmt
> +#define ACPI_BERT_PRINT_MAX_LEN 1024
>
>  static int bert_disable;
>
> @@ -58,8 +59,11 @@ static void __init bert_print_all(struct acpi_bert_region *region,
>                 }
>
>                 pr_info_once("Error records from previous boot:\n");
> -
> -               cper_estatus_print(KERN_INFO HW_ERR, estatus);
> +               if (region_len < ACPI_BERT_PRINT_MAX_LEN)
> +                       cper_estatus_print(KERN_INFO HW_ERR, estatus);
> +               else
> +                       pr_info_once("Max print length exceeded, table data is available at:\n"
> +                                    "/sys/firmware/acpi/tables/data/BERT");
>
>                 /*
>                  * Because the boot error source is "one-time polled" type,
> --
> 2.31.1
>