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References: <20200303113002.63089-1-sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20200303113002.63089-1-sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
From:   Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Date:   Wed, 1 Apr 2020 21:34:29 +0200
Message-ID: <CAG48ez3iiN6Y77F_7Rdba6_obhAMaTQ+M0YfGMV2Fk762-5PZg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCHv2] printk: queue wake_up_klogd irq_work only if per-CPU
 areas are ready
To:     Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com>
Cc:     Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>,
        Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
        kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        Lech Perczak <l.perczak@camlintechnologies.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
        John Ogness <john.ogness@linutronix.de>
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On Tue, Mar 3, 2020 at 12:30 PM Sergey Senozhatsky
<sergey.senozhatsky@gmail.com> wrote:
> printk_deferred(), similarly to printk_safe/printk_nmi,
> does not immediately attempt to print a new message on
> the consoles, avoiding calls into non-reentrant kernel
> paths, e.g. scheduler or timekeeping, which potentially
> can deadlock the system. Those printk() flavors, instead,
> rely on per-CPU flush irq_work to print messages from
> safer contexts. For same reasons (recursive scheduler or
> timekeeping calls) printk() uses per-CPU irq_work in
> order to wake up user space syslog/kmsg readers.
>
> However, only printk_safe/printk_nmi do make sure that
> per-CPU areas have been initialised and that it's safe
> to modify per-CPU irq_work. This means that, for instance,
> should printk_deferred() be invoked "too early", that
> is before per-CPU areas are initialised, printk_deferred()
> will perform illegal per-CPU access.
>
> Lech Perczak [0] reports that after commit 1b710b1b10ef
> ("char/random: silence a lockdep splat with printk()")
> user-space syslog/kmsg readers are not able to read new
> kernel messages. The reason is printk_deferred() being
> called too early (as was pointed out by Petr and John).
>
> Fix printk_deferred() and do not queue per-CPU irq_work
> before per-CPU areas are initialized.

I ran into the same issue during some development work, and Sergey
directed me to this patch. It fixes the problem for me. Thanks!

Tested-by: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>