Re: BUG: tick device NULL pointer during system initialization andshutdown

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Wed Jun 26 2013 - 07:05:31 EST


On Tue, 25 Jun 2013, Prarit Bhargava wrote:
> On 06/24/2013 09:57 AM, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Tue, 18 Jun 2013, Prarit Bhargava wrote:
> >
> >> Similar panics reported during bringup here:
> >>
> >> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2013-May/166205.html
> >> http://lkml.org/lkml/2013/5/8/342
> >>
> >> I've seen this a few times on 3.10 based kernels.
> >>
> >> [ 175.842027] Disabling non-boot CPUs ...
> >> [ 475.827017] BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
> >> 0000000000000048
> >
> > That looks like a stale bit in tick_broadcast_force_mask.
> >
> > Does the patch below fix it?
> >
>
> Thomas,
>
> Thanks for the patch.
>
> The reproducibility appears to be quite low. I'm seeing this roughly 1 time
> every six hours of continuous system reboots. I'm testing right now with your
> patch. I'll update the thread in a couple of days...

I have a proper version of that patch now along with an explanation of
the failure.

-------------------->

Subject: tick: Make oneshot broadcast robust vs. CPU offlining
From: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 12:17:32 +0200

In periodic mode we remove offline cpus from the broadcast propagation
mask. In oneshot mode we fail to do so. This was not a problem so far,
but the recent changes to the broadcast propagation introduced a
constellation which can result in a NULL pointer dereference.

What happens is:

CPU0 CPU1
idle()
arch_idle()
tick_broadcast_oneshot_control(OFF);
set cpu1 in tick_broadcast_force_mask
if (cpu_offline())
arch_cpu_dead()

cpu_dead_cleanup(cpu1)
cpu1 tickdevice pointer = NULL

broadcast interrupt
dereference cpu1 tickdevice pointer -> OOPS

We dereference the pointer because cpu1 is still set in
tick_broadcast_force_mask and tick_do_broadcast() expects a valid
cpumask and therefor lacks any further checks.

Remove the cpu from the tick_broadcast_force_mask before we set the
tick device pointer to NULL. Also add a sanity check to the oneshot
broadcast function, so we can detect such issues w/o crashing the
machine.

Reported-by: Prarit Bhargava <prarit@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c | 13 +++++++++++--
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

Index: tip/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
===================================================================
--- tip.orig/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
+++ tip/kernel/time/tick-broadcast.c
@@ -522,6 +522,13 @@ again:
cpumask_clear(tick_broadcast_force_mask);

/*
+ * Sanity check. Catch the case where we try to broadcast to
+ * offline cpus.
+ */
+ if (WARN_ON_ONCE(!cpumask_subset(tmpmask, cpu_online_mask)))
+ cpumask_and(tmpmask, tmpmask, cpu_online_mask);
+
+ /*
* Wakeup the cpus which have an expired event.
*/
tick_do_broadcast(tmpmask);
@@ -761,10 +768,12 @@ void tick_shutdown_broadcast_oneshot(uns
raw_spin_lock_irqsave(&tick_broadcast_lock, flags);

/*
- * Clear the broadcast mask flag for the dead cpu, but do not
- * stop the broadcast device!
+ * Clear the broadcast masks for the dead cpu, but do not stop
+ * the broadcast device!
*/
cpumask_clear_cpu(cpu, tick_broadcast_oneshot_mask);
+ cpumask_clear_cpu(cpu, tick_broadcast_pending_mask);
+ cpumask_clear_cpu(cpu, tick_broadcast_force_mask);

raw_spin_unlock_irqrestore(&tick_broadcast_lock, flags);
}
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