Re: [PATCH 0/4] x86/mce: protect nr_cpus from rebooting by broadcast mce

[Dave Young <dyoung@redhat.com>]

Add Tony and Xunlei in cc.
On 08/05/19 at 04:58pm, Pingfan Liu wrote:
> This series include two related groups:
> [1-3/4]: protect nr_cpus from rebooting by broadcast mce
> [4/4]: improve "kexec -l" robustness against broadcast mce
> 
> When I tried to fix [1], Thomas raised concern about the nr_cpus' vulnerability
> to unexpected rebooting by broadcast mce. After analysis, I think only the
> following first case suffers from the rebooting by broadcast mce. [1-3/4] aims
> to fix that issue.

I did not understand and read the MCE details, but we previously had a
MCE problem, Xunlei fixed in below commit:
commit 5bc329503e8191c91c4c40836f062ef771d8ba83
Author: Xunlei Pang <xlpang@redhat.com>
Date:   Mon Mar 13 10:50:19 2017 +0100

    x86/mce: Handle broadcasted MCE gracefully with kexec

I wonder if this is same issue or not. Also the old discussion is in
below thread:
https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/753530/

Tony raised similar questions, but I'm not sure if it is still a problem
or it has been fixed.

> 
> *** Back ground ***
> 
> On x86 it's required to have all logical CPUs set CR4.MCE=1. Otherwise, a
> broadcast MCE observing CR4.MCE=0b on any core will shutdown the machine.
> 
> The option 'nosmt' has already complied with the above rule by Thomas's patch.
> For detail, refer to 506a66f3748 (Revert "x86/apic: Ignore secondary threads if
> nosmt=force")
> 
> But for nr_cpus option, the exposure to broadcast MCE is a little complicated,
> and can be categorized into three cases.
> 
> -1. boot up by BIOS. Since no one set CR4.MCE=1, nr_cpus risks rebooting by
> broadcast MCE.
> 
> -2. boot up by "kexec -p nr_cpus=".  Since the 1st kernel has all cpus'
> CR4.MCE=1 set before kexec -p, nr_cpus is free of rebooting by broadcast MCE.
> Furthermore, the crashed kernel's wreckage, including page table and text, is
> not touched by capture kernel. Hence if MCE event happens on capped cpu,
> do_machine_check->__mc_check_crashing_cpu() runs smoothly and returns
> immediately, the capped cpu is still pinned on "halt".
> 
> -3. boot up by "kexec -l nr_cpus=". As "kexec -p", it is free of rebooting by
> broadcast MCE. But the 1st kernel's wreckage is discarded and changed.  when
> capped cpus execute do_machine_check(), they may crack the new kernel.  But
> this is not related with broadcast MCE, and need an extra fix.
> 
> *** Solution ***
> "nr_cpus" can not follow the same way as "nosmt".  Because nr_cpus limits the
> allocation of percpu area and some other kthread memory, which is critical to
> cpu hotplug framework.  Instead, developing a dedicated SIPI callback
> make_capped_cpu_stable() for capped cpu, which does not lean on percpu area to
> work.
> 
> [1]: https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/7/5/3
> 
> To: Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
> To: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
> Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
> Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
> To: x86@kernel.org
> Cc: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
> Cc: Qian Cai <cai@lca.pw>
> Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> Cc: Daniel Drake <drake@endlessm.com>
> Cc: Jacob Pan <jacob.jun.pan@linux.intel.com>
> Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
> Cc: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
> Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Cc: Dave Young <dyoung@redhat.com>
> Cc: Baoquan He <bhe@redhat.com>
> Cc: kexec@lists.infradead.org
> 
> ---
> Pingfan Liu (4):
>   x86/apic: correct the ENO in generic_processor_info()
>   x86/apic: record capped cpu in generic_processor_info()
>   x86/smp: send capped cpus to a stable state when smp_init()
>   x86/smp: disallow MCE handler on rebooting AP
> 
>  arch/x86/include/asm/apic.h  |  1 +
>  arch/x86/include/asm/smp.h   |  3 ++
>  arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c  | 23 ++++++++----
>  arch/x86/kernel/cpu/common.c |  7 ++++
>  arch/x86/kernel/smp.c        |  8 +++++
>  arch/x86/kernel/smpboot.c    | 83 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  kernel/smp.c                 |  6 ++++
>  7 files changed, 124 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
> 
> -- 
> 2.7.5
> 

Thanks
Dave