Re: pciehp 0000:00:1c.0:pcie004: Timeout on hotplug command 0x1038 (issued 65284 msec ago)

[Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier@arm.com>]

On Tue, 01 May 2018 14:25:54 +0100,
Bjorn Helgaas wrote:

Hi Bjorn,

> On Tue, May 01, 2018 at 01:59:20PM +0100, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> > On 01/05/18 13:38, Sinan Kaya wrote:
> > > +Marc,
> > > 
> > > On 4/30/2018 5:27 PM, Sinan Kaya wrote:
> > >> On 4/30/2018 5:17 PM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> > >>>> What should we do about this?
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Since there is an actual HW errata involved, should we quirk this
> > >>>> root port and not wait as if remove/shutdown doesn't exist?
> > >>> I was hoping to avoid a quirk because AFAIK all Intel parts have this
> > >>> issue so it will be an ongoing maintenance issue.  I tried to avoid
> > >>> the timeout delays, e.g., with 40b960831cfa ("PCI: pciehp: Compute
> > >>> timeout from hotplug command start time").
> > >>>
> > >>> But we still see the alarming messages, so we should probably add a
> > >>> quirk to get rid of those.
> > >>>
> > >>> But I haven't given up on the idea of getting rid of the
> > >>> pciehp_remove() path.  I'm not convinced yet that we actually need to
> > >>> do anything to shut this device down.  I don't like the assumption
> > >>> that kexec requires this.  The kexec is fundamentally just a branch,
> > >>> and anything we do before the branch (i.e., in the old kernel), we
> > >>> should also be able to do after the branch (i.e., in the kexec-ed
> > >>> kernel).
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> In my experience with kexec, MSI type edge interrupts are harmless.
> > >> You might just see a few unhandled interrupt messages during boot
> > >> if something is pending from the first kernel.
> > 
> > Unfortunately, that's not always the case.
> > 
> > A number of GICv3/v4 implementations (a very common interrupt controller
> > on ARM servers) cannot be disabled, which means they will keep writing
> > to their pending tables long after kexec will have started the new
> > kernel. And since we don't track memory allocation across kexec, you
> > end-up with significant chances of observing single bit corruption as
> > interrupts carry on being delivered. Oh, and you won't actually be able
> > to take MSIs because you can't even reprogram the damn thing.
> > 
> > Yes, this can be considered a HW bug.
> > 
> > >> It is the level interrupts that are more concerning. It remains pending
> > >> until the interrupt source is cleared. CPU never returns from the
> > >> interrupt handler to actually continue booting the second kernel.
> > > 
> > > This makes me wonder why kexec doesn't disable all interrupt sources by
> > > itself instead of relying on the drivers shutdown routine. Some drivers
> > > don't even have a shutdown callback. Kexec could have done both as another
> > > example. Something like.
> > > 
> > > 1. Call shutdown for all drivers if available.
> > > 2. Disable all interrupt sources in the interrupt controller
> > > 3. Start the new kernel.
> > 
> > See above. Although you can shut off the end-point and to some extent
> > mask interrupts before jumping into the payload, it is not always
> > possible to go back to a reasonable state where you can take actually MSIs.
> 
> This is exactly the sort of thing it would be nice to collect and
> document as part of the background of "why kexec works the way it
> does."  It certainly helps explain things that are far from obvious if
> you don't have the background.

I'd certainly be happy to help with it if someone was willing to
kickstart such a document. kexec/kdump is a huge bag of "interesting"
tricks, and it has driven me mad over the past couple of months (I'm
typing this from a laptop that uses kexec as its bootloader, and it is
*not fun*).

	M.

-- 
Jazz is not dead, it just smell funny.