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[Bug runtime/20735] "soft lockup" bug on RHEL7 ppc64
- From: "dsmith at redhat dot com" <sourceware-bugzilla at sourceware dot org>
- To: systemtap at sourceware dot org
- Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2016 21:17:14 +0000
- Subject: [Bug runtime/20735] "soft lockup" bug on RHEL7 ppc64
- Auto-submitted: auto-generated
- References: <bug-20735-6586@http.sourceware.org/bugzilla/>
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=20735
--- Comment #1 from David Smith <dsmith at redhat dot com> ---
I've been looking at this lockup, and my suspicion is that the problem lies
with the systemtap runtime grabbing the module_mutex. The module_mutex is
exported by the kernel, and the systemtap runtime grabs that mutex when calling
kallsyms_on_each_symbol(). In the lockup below, there are at least 5 systemtap
modules loaded simultaneously. When the last systemtap module got loaded, that
triggered the other 4 to get notified that a new module was loaded. That causes
the other 4 to try to grab the module_mutex to update module symbols (via
stapkp_refresh() in runtime/linux/kprobes.c). In addition, the last one loaded
could be calling stapkp_init() (runtime/linux/kprobes.c) which also tries to
grab the module mutex.
So, my suspicion is that all 5 of those modules are trying to grab that same
mutex at the same time. Plus, kallsyms_on_each_symbol() isn't quick, since it
calls a function on every kernel symbol.
Here's the comment before the module_mutex definition in kernel/module.c:
/*
* Mutex protects:
* 1) List of modules (also safely readable with preempt_disable),
* 2) module_use links,
* 3) module_addr_min/module_addr_max.
* (delete uses stop_machine/add uses RCU list operations). */
Based on that comment, I'm going to try to see what happens if we disable
preemption before calling kallsyms_on_each_symbol() and enabling preemption
afterwards instead of using module_mutex.
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