Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753889AbbGWRkw (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Jul 2015 13:40:52 -0400 Received: from mail-wi0-f178.google.com ([209.85.212.178]:38520 "EHLO mail-wi0-f178.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752577AbbGWRkt (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Jul 2015 13:40:49 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <1437672810-9641-1-git-send-email-toshi.kani@hp.com> References: <1437672810-9641-1-git-send-email-toshi.kani@hp.com> Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2015 10:40:48 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/panic/reboot: Flush processor caches during panic/reboot From: Dan Williams To: Toshi Kani Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" , Thomas Gleixner , Ingo Molnar , X86 ML , Borislav Petkov , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , "linux-nvdimm@lists.01.org" Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1715 Lines: 44 On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Toshi Kani wrote: > During power failure, Asynchronous DRAM Refresh (ADR) flushes > the write buffer in memory controllers into NVDIMM, but does not > flush processor caches. While the kernel and application code > need to take care of processor cache flush, they may not be able > to do so during panic or reboot. > > Add processor cache flush (wbinvd) to the stop-CPUs interfaces, > native_stop_other_cpus() and nmi_shootdown_cpus(), which are > called during panic and reboot as follows. These wbinvd()s are > called on each CPU after its irq/APIC is disabled. > > - panic() > + smp_send_stop() > o native_stop_other_cpus() > o stop_this_cpu() > > - native_machine_restart() > - native_machine_halt() > - native_machine_power_off() > + native_machine_shutdown() > + stop_other_cpus() > o native_stop_other_cpus() > o stop_this_cpu() > > - native_machine_crash_shutdown() > + kdump_nmi_shootdown_cpus() > o nmi_shootdown_cpus() > o crash_nmi_callback() > > Note, the cpu offline path, mwait_play_dead(), already calls > wbinvd(). > If the application is already prepared for surprise power loss what additional benefit is there to flushing caches on panic? In other words, if the application needs this for correctness then it is broken with respect to surprise power loss, otherwise these flushes are not necessary. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/