Re: [PATCH] mm/page_isolation: don't putback unisolated page

[John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>]

On 9/9/21 1:56 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 09.09.21 00:42, John Hubbard wrote:
>> On 9/7/21 2:56 AM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> ...
>>>> If this can be handled gracefully, then I'd rather go with VM_WARN_ON.
>>>> Maybe even WARN_ON_ONCE?
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think either VM_BUG_ON() or VM_WARN_ON() -- compiling the runtime checks out -- should be good
>>> enough.
>>>
>>> I'd just go with VM_BUG_ON(), because anybody messing with __isolate_free_page() should clearly spot
>>> that we expect the current handling. But no strong opinion.
>>>
>>
>> If in doubt, WARN*() should be preferred over BUG*(). There's a pretty long
>> history of "don't kill the machine unless you have to" emails about this, let
>> me dig up one...OK, maybe not the best example, but the tip of the iceberg:
> 
> Please note the subtle difference between BUG_ON and VM_BUG_ON. We expect VM_BUG_ON to be compiled 
> out on any production system. So it's really only a mean to identify things that really shouldn't be 
> like that during debugging/testing.
>

Yes, but the end result is the same: it halts the system. It don't think it changes
the reasoning about BUG vs WARN very much.


> Using WARN... instead of VM_BUG_ON is even worse for production systems. There are distros that set 
> panic_on_warn, essentially converting WARN... into BUG...
> 

This is different than BUG: panic() *prints a backtrace*, and then reboots the system.
That is still awkward, but a little more debuggable.

thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard
NVIDIA