Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86/numa: instance all parsed numa node

[Pingfan Liu <kernelfans@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 9:34 PM Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Jul 9, 2019, at 1:24 AM, Pingfan Liu <kernelfans@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 2:12 PM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> >>
> >>> On Tue, 9 Jul 2019, Pingfan Liu wrote:
> >>>> On Mon, Jul 8, 2019 at 5:35 PM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> wrote:
> >>>> It can and it does.
> >>>>
> >>>> That's the whole point why we bring up all CPUs in the 'nosmt' case and
> >>>> shut the siblings down again after setting CR4.MCE. Actually that's in fact
> >>>> a 'let's hope no MCE hits before that happened' approach, but that's all we
> >>>> can do.
> >>>>
> >>>> If we don't do that then the MCE broadcast can hit a CPU which has some
> >>>> firmware initialized state. The result can be a full system lockup, triple
> >>>> fault etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> So when the MCE hits a CPU which is still in the crashed kernel lala state,
> >>>> then all hell breaks lose.
> >>> Thank you for the comprehensive explain. With your guide, now, I have
> >>> a full understanding of the issue.
> >>>
> >>> But when I tried to add something to enable CR4.MCE in
> >>> crash_nmi_callback(), I realized that it is undo-able in some case (if
> >>> crashed, we will not ask an offline smt cpu to online), also it is
> >>> needless. "kexec -l/-p" takes the advantage of the cpu state in the
> >>> first kernel, where all logical cpu has CR4.MCE=1.
> >>>
> >>> So kexec is exempt from this bug if the first kernel already do it.
> >>
> >> No. If the MCE broadcast is handled by a CPU which is stuck in the old
> >> kernel stop loop, then it will execute on the old kernel and eventually run
> >> into the memory corruption which crashed the old one.
> >>
> > Yes, you are right. Stuck cpu may execute the old do_machine_check()
> > code. But I just found out that we have
> > do_machine_check()->__mc_check_crashing_cpu() to against this case.
> >
> > And I think the MCE issue with nr_cpus is not closely related with
> > this series, can
> > be a separated issue. I had question whether Andy will take it, if
> > not, I am glad to do it.
> >
> >
>
> Go for it. I’m not familiar enough with the SMP boot stuff that I would be able to do it any faster than you. I’ll gladly help review it.
I had sent out a patch to fix maxcpus "[PATCH] smp: force all cpu to
boot once under maxcpus option"
But for the case of nrcpus, I think things will not be so easy due to
percpu area, and I think it may take a quite different way.

Thanks,
  Pingfan