Re: [PATCH] powerpc/perf: Dereference bhrb entries safely

From: Naveen N. Rao
Date: Tue Dec 12 2017 - 10:39:48 EST


Ravi Bangoria wrote:
It may very well happen that branch instructions recorded by
bhrb entries already get unmapped before they get processed by
the kernel. Hence, trying to dereference such memory location
will endup in a crash. Ex,

Unable to handle kernel paging request for data at address 0xc008000019c41764
Faulting instruction address: 0xc000000000084a14
NIP [c000000000084a14] branch_target+0x4/0x70
LR [c0000000000eb828] record_and_restart+0x568/0x5c0
Call Trace:
[c0000000000eb3b4] record_and_restart+0xf4/0x5c0 (unreliable)
[c0000000000ec378] perf_event_interrupt+0x298/0x460
[c000000000027964] performance_monitor_exception+0x54/0x70
[c000000000009ba4] performance_monitor_common+0x114/0x120

Fix this by deferefencing them safely.

Suggested-by: Naveen N. Rao <naveen.n.rao@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Ravi Bangoria <ravi.bangoria@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Reviewed-by: Naveen N. Rao <naveen.n.rao@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


- Naveen