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Background:
The MCE handler has several paths that it can take, depending on various
conditions of the MCE status and the value of the 'tolerant' knob. The
exact semantics are not well defined and the code is a bit twisty.
Description:
This patch makes the MCE handler's behavior more clear by documenting the
behavior for various 'tolerant' levels. It also fixes or enhances
several small things in the handler. Specifically:
* If RIPV is set it is not safe to restart, so set the 'no way out'
flag rather than the 'kill it' flag.
* Don't panic() on correctable MCEs.
* If the _OVER bit is set *and* the _UC bit is set (meaning possibly
dropped uncorrected errors), set the 'no way out' flag.
* Use EIPV for testing whether an app can be killed (SIGBUS) rather
than RIPV. According to docs, EIPV indicates that the error is
related to the IP, while RIPV simply means the IP is valid to
restart from.
* Don't clear the MCi_STATUS registers until after the panic() path.
This leaves the status bits set after the panic() so clever BIOSes
can find them (and dumb BIOSes can do nothing).
This patch also calls nonseekable_open() in mce_open (as suggested by akpm).
Result:
Tolerant levels behave almost identically to how they always have, but
not it's well defined. There's a slightly higher chance of panic()ing
when multiple errors happen (a good thing, IMHO). If you take an MBE and
panic(), the error status bits are not cleared.
Alternatives:
None.
Testing:
I used software to inject correctable and uncorrectable errors. With
tolerant = 3, the system usually survives. With tolerant = 2, the system
usually panic()s (PCC) but not always. With tolerant = 1, the system
always panic()s. When the system panic()s, the BIOS is able to detect
that the cause of death was an MC4. I was not able to reproduce the
case of a non-PCC error in userspace, with EIPV, with (tolerant < 3).
That will be rare at best.
Signed-off-by: Tim Hockin <thockin@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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Background:
We've found that MCEs (specifically DRAM SBEs) tend to come in bunches,
especially when we are trying really hard to stress the system out. The
current MCE poller uses a static interval which does not care whether it
has or has not found MCEs recently.
Description:
This patch makes the MCE poller adjust the polling interval dynamically.
If we find an MCE, poll 2x faster (down to 10 ms). When we stop finding
MCEs, poll 2x slower (up to check_interval seconds). The check_interval
tunable becomes the max polling interval. The "Machine check events
logged" printk() is rate limited to the check_interval, which should be
identical behavior to the old functionality.
Result:
If you start to take a lot of correctable errors (not exceptions), you
log them faster and more accurately (less chance of overflowing the MCA
registers). If you don't take a lot of errors, you will see no change.
Alternatives:
I considered simply reducing the polling interval to 10 ms immediately
and keeping it there as long as we continue to find errors. This felt a
bit heavy handed, but does perform significantly better for the default
check_interval of 5 minutes (we're using a few seconds when testing for
DRAM errors). I could be convinced to go with this, if anyone felt it
was not too aggressive.
Testing:
I used an error-injecting DIMM to create lots of correctable DRAM errors
and verified that the polling interval accelerates. The printk() only
happens once per check_interval seconds.
Patch:
This patch is against 2.6.21-rc7.
Signed-Off-By: Tim Hockin <thockin@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
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