From db3a34e17433de2390eb80d436970edcebd0ca3e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Paul E. McKenney" Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 12:01:19 -0700 Subject: clocksource: Retry clock read if long delays detected When the clocksource watchdog marks a clock as unstable, this might be due to that clock being unstable or it might be due to delays that happen to occur between the reads of the two clocks. Yes, interrupts are disabled across those two reads, but there are no shortage of things that can delay interrupts-disabled regions of code ranging from SMI handlers to vCPU preemption. It would be good to have some indication as to why the clock was marked unstable. Therefore, re-read the watchdog clock on either side of the read from the clock under test. If the watchdog clock shows an excessive time delta between its pair of reads, the reads are retried. The maximum number of retries is specified by a new kernel boot parameter clocksource.max_cswd_read_retries, which defaults to three, that is, up to four reads, one initial and up to three retries. If more than one retry was required, a message is printed on the console (the occasional single retry is expected behavior, especially in guest OSes). If the maximum number of retries is exceeded, the clock under test will be marked unstable. However, the probability of this happening due to various sorts of delays is quite small. In addition, the reason (clock-read delays) for the unstable marking will be apparent. Reported-by: Chris Mason Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner Acked-by: Feng Tang Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210527190124.440372-1-paulmck@kernel.org --- Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt | 6 ++++++ 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+) (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide') diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt index cb89dbdedc46..995deccc28bc 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt @@ -581,6 +581,12 @@ loops can be debugged more effectively on production systems. + clocksource.max_cswd_read_retries= [KNL] + Number of clocksource_watchdog() retries due to + external delays before the clock will be marked + unstable. Defaults to three retries, that is, + four attempts to read the clock under test. + clearcpuid=BITNUM[,BITNUM...] [X86] Disable CPUID feature X for the kernel. See arch/x86/include/asm/cpufeatures.h for the valid bit -- cgit v1.2.3