Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code

From	Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Newsgroups	linux.kernel
Subject	Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code
Date	2016-07-23 02:40 +0200
Message-ID	<rXT8Z-4s0-3@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
References	<rXtHz-4Eb-5@gated-at.bofh.it> <rXSZk-4p1-9@gated-at.bofh.it>
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

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On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 5:22 PM, Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>
> So without having yet looked at the code, I want people to understand
> that to a very real degree, the stack tracer that the *oopsing* code
> (ie what all the usual kernel fault handlers use) is very very special
> code and needs to be handled very carefully, and needs to be extra
> robust, even in the presence of stack corruption, and even in the
> presence of the dwarf info being totally corrupted. Because we've very
> much had both things happen.
>
> It is very possible that we should have two different stack tracers -
> the stupid "for oopses only" code that doesn't necessarily give the
> perfect trace, but is very anal and happily gives old stale addresses
> (which can be very useful for seeing what happened just before the
> "real" stack trace), and then a separate stack trace engine that is
> clever and gets things right, and if that one faults it can depend on
> the normal kernel fault handling picking up the pieces.

I think that Josh's code has the potential to be extremely robust
*and* give more correct results when possible.  One thing I intend to
review when v2 shows up is that it's as conservative as it needs to be
to avoid ever dereferencing an out-of-bounds pointer.  And Josh's oops
printer carefully walks and prints out all addresses on the stack
(complete with question marks) even if the unwinder doesn't find them.

>
> Yes, the current stack tracer is  crufty. No, it's not perfect. But it
> is very well tested, and has held up. That should not be dismissed.
>

I think you may be giving the current tracer slightly more credit than
it's due.  In my stack guard page patchset, I fixed two separate
issues, one of which caused recursive faults and one of which caused
it to output nothing at all.  So maybe *now* it's very robust :)  But
it's still an umaintainable mess IMO, and Josh's patchset helps a
*lot*.

--Andy

Thread

[PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 05/19] x86/dumpstack: fix function graph tracing stack dump reliability issues Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 04/19] x86/dumpstack: make printk_stack_address() more generally useful Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 18/19] x86/dumpstack: print stack identifier on its own line Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 13/19] x86/stacktrace: convert save_stack_trace_*() to the new unwinder Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 00:40 +0200
      Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-22 05:40 +0200
        Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 07:20 +0200
          Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-22 18:00 +0200
            Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 23:50 +0200
              Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 00:30 +0200
                Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 01:20 +0200
                Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 01:40 +0200
                Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 02:10 +0200
                Re: [PATCH 19/19] x86/dumpstack: print any pt_regs found on the stack Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 01:40 +0200
  [PATCH 08/19] x86/dumpstack: don't disable preemption in show_stack_log_lvl() and dump_trace() Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 14/19] oprofile/x86: convert x86_backtrace() to the new unwinder Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 06/19] x86/dumpstack: remove extra brackets around "EOE" Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 01:30 +0200
      Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 02:00 +0200
        Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 15:10 +0200
      Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 02:00 +0200
        Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 02:20 +0200
          Re: [PATCH 10/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_info() interface Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 16:10 +0200
  [PATCH 01/19] x86/dumpstack: remove show_trace() Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 01/19] x86/dumpstack: remove show_trace() Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 00:00 +0200
  [PATCH 12/19] perf/x86: convert perf_callchain_kernel() to the new unwinder Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 02/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_pointer() and get_frame_pointer() Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 02/19] x86/dumpstack: add get_stack_pointer() and get_frame_pointer() Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 00:00 +0200
  [PATCH 11/19] x86/dumptrace: add new unwind interface and implementations Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
  [PATCH 09/19] x86/dumpstack: simplify in_exception_stack() Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 09/19] x86/dumpstack: simplify in_exception_stack() Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 00:10 +0200
  [PATCH 07/19] x86/dumpstack: add IRQ_USABLE_STACK_SIZE define Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-21 23:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 07/19] x86/dumpstack: add IRQ_USABLE_STACK_SIZE define Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-22 00:10 +0200
      Re: [PATCH 07/19] x86/dumpstack: add IRQ_USABLE_STACK_SIZE define Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-22 03:50 +0200
        Re: [PATCH 07/19] x86/dumpstack: add IRQ_USABLE_STACK_SIZE define Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> - 2016-07-22 10:30 +0200
  Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-07-23 02:30 +0200
    Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> - 2016-07-23 02:40 +0200
      Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 07:40 +0200
        Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> - 2016-07-23 07:50 +0200
          Re: [PATCH 00/19] x86/dumpstack: rewrite x86 stack dump code Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - 2016-07-23 15:00 +0200

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