Re: Perhaps a side effect regarding NMI returns

[Linus Torvalds]

On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 8:07 PM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> If enabling interrupts also enables NMIs, then there's no side effect.

The only thing that enables NMI's again is 'iret', afaik. Of course,
it can be *any* iret, so once you enable interrupts, you can get a
timer interrupt, and the timer interrupt returning with iret will
re-enable NMI's then too.

I would suggest that the actual NMI handler itself should probably
never use that paranoid exit at all, and just always use a regular
iret. Screw scheduling and TIF checks.

Probably only the exceptions that can happen *during* NMI (eg debug,
stack exception, double-fault etc) should use the paranoid versions
that try to avoid using iret.

Because I think you're right - we shouldn't call schedule() from
within the NMI handler, even if we do enable interrupts and switch to
the normal stack. Even if it probably does happen to work normally.

But I have to admit to not necessarily thinking it through a lot.

                            Linus
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