Re: [PATCH 04/30] firmware: google: Convert regular spinlock into trylock on panic path

[John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>]

On 2022-05-10, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
>> As already mentioned in the other reply, panic() sometimes stops the
>> other CPUs using NMI, for example, see kdump_nmi_shootdown_cpus().
>> 
>> Another situation is when the CPU using the lock ends in some
>> infinite loop because something went wrong. The system is in
>> an unpredictable state during panic().
>> 
>> I am not sure if this is possible with the code under gsmi_dev.lock
>> but such things really happen during panic() in other subsystems.
>> Using trylock in the panic() code path is a good practice.
>
> I believe that Peter Zijlstra had a special spin lock for NMIs or
> early printk, where it would not block if the lock was held on the
> same CPU. That is, if an NMI happened and paniced while this lock was
> held on the same CPU, it would not deadlock. But it would block if the
> lock was held on another CPU.

Yes. And starting with 5.19 it will be carrying the name that _you_ came
up with (cpu_sync):

printk_cpu_sync_get_irqsave()
printk_cpu_sync_put_irqrestore()

John