Re: [PATCH 2/3] x86, MCE: Drop default decoding notifier

From: Borislav Petkov
Date: Wed Apr 13 2011 - 10:27:15 EST


On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:22:41AM -0400, Prarit Bhargava wrote:
>
>
> On 04/13/2011 10:18 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:01:22AM -0400, Prarit Bhargava wrote:
> >
> >> On 04/13/2011 09:36 AM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> >>
> >>> From: Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov@xxxxxxx>
> >>>
> >>> The default notifier doesn't make a lot of sense to call in the
> >>> correctable errors case. Drop it and emit the mcelog decoding hint only
> >>> in the uncorrectable errors case and when no notifier is registered.
> >>>
> >>> Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <borislav.petkov@xxxxxxx>
> >>> ---
> >>> arch/x86/include/asm/mce.h | 4 ++--
> >>> arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mcheck/mce.c | 26 +++++++++-----------------
> >>> 2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 19 deletions(-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>> +extern atomic_t mce_decoders;
> >>> +
> >>>
> >> Boris,
> >>
> >> I don't think we need to do this. I think we can use the existing notifier chain tools to do this check for us ... *untested and uncompiled* patch below.
> >>
> >> * Print out human-readable details about the MCE error,
> >>
> >>> * (if the CPU has an implementation for that)
> >>> */
> >>> - atomic_notifier_call_chain(&x86_mce_decoder_chain, 0, m);
> >>> + if (!atomic_read(&mce_decoders)) {
> >>> + pr_emerg(HW_ERR "No human readable MCE decoding support on this CPU type.\n");
> >>> + pr_emerg(HW_ERR "Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' to decode.\n");
> >>>
> >> I thought we didn't want these lines at all for CE errors?
> >>
> > This is the UC only case - we call print_mce() before we panic.
> >
>
> .. right ... but we would still see nonsensical messages before the
> panic, which will confuse the end user. IMO, dump the messages unless
> it's UC. And we shouldn't print out the human readable message at all.

I'd still leave the "mcelog ... " line though as a hint.

> I'm installing F14 on a system that is known to generate CEs @
> boot-time. I'll test patches+latest upstream to here to see what happens...

Cool.

--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.

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