Boot failure with next-20120208

[Andrew Morton]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:18:34 -0800
Arjan van de Ven <arjan at linux.intel.com> wrote:

> On 2/12/2012 7:04 PM, Michael Neuling wrote:
> >> Just a quick note to say I got a boot OOPs with next-20120208 and 9 on a
> >> Power7 blade (my other PowerPC boot tests are ok.  I'll investigate this
> >> further on Monday.

Thanks for testing linux-next.  Very useful.

> >> The line referenced below is:
> >>
> >> BUG_ON(!kobj || !kobj->sd || !attr);
> >>
> >> in sysfs_create_file().

Yes, this is exactly why we should never use BUG_ON(a || b).  We don't
know which of those three expressions triggered.

> >> calling  .topology_init+0x0/0x1ac @ 1
> >> initcall 7_.async_cpu_up+0x0/0x40 returned 0 after 9765 usecs
> >> async_continuing @ 20 after 9765 usec
> >> ------------[ cut here ]------------
> >> kernel BUG at fs/sysfs/file.c:573!
> >> Oops: Exception in kernel mode, sig: 5 [#1]
> >> SMP NR_CPUS=32 NUMA pSeries
> >> Modules linked in:
> >> NIP: c00000000024a35c LR: c0000000004ee050 CTR: c00000000083ca24
> >> REGS: c0000003fd9e7560 TRAP: 0700   Not tainted  (3.3.0-rc2-autokern1)
> >> MSR: 8000000000029032 <SF,EE,ME,IR,DR,RI>  CR: 88002082  XER: 0000000f
> >> CFAR: c00000000024a370
> >> TASK = c0000003fd9e8000[20] 'kworker/u:6' THREAD: c0000003fd9e4000 CPU: 0
> >> GPR00: 0000000000000001 c0000003fd9e77e0 c000000000d19bb8 0000000000000000 
> >> GPR04: c000000000bf37a8 0000000000000008 8000000002096400 0000000000000000 
> >> GPR08: 0000000000000000 c000000000f80028 c000000000d52bd8 0000000000000000 
> >> GPR12: 0000000048002088 c00000000f33b000 0000000001affa78 00000000009aa000 
> >> GPR16: 0000000000e1f3c8 0000000002d517f0 0000000001aff984 0000000000000060 
> >> GPR20: 0000000000000000 ffffffffffffffff 0000000000000000 c000000000c45128 
> >> GPR24: 0000000000000000 0000000000000008 0000000000000000 c000000000c44200 
> >> GPR28: c000000000f80028 0000000000000008 c000000000c85038 0000000000000002 
> >> NIP [c00000000024a35c] .sysfs_create_file+0x1c/0x40
> >> LR [c0000000004ee050] .device_create_file+0x20/0x40
> >> Call Trace:
> >> [c0000003fd9e77e0] [c0000003fd9e78a0] 0xc0000003fd9e78a0 (unreliable)
> >> [c0000003fd9e7850] [c00000000083c9a4] .register_cpu_online+0x1d0/0x250
> >> [c0000003fd9e7900] [c00000000083ca8c] .sysfs_cpu_notify+0x68/0x28c
> >> [c0000003fd9e79b0] [c00000000083769c] .notifier_call_chain+0x9c/0x100
> >> [c0000003fd9e7a50] [c0000000000a5878] .__cpu_notify+0x38/0x80
> >> [c0000003fd9e7ad0] [c00000000083e124] ._cpu_up+0x10c/0x178
> >> [c0000003fd9e7b90] [c00000000083e2c8] .cpu_up+0x138/0x164
> >> [c0000003fd9e7c20] [c000000000ba46d0] .async_cpu_up+0x28/0x40
> >> [c0000003fd9e7ca0] [c0000000000d81ec] .async_run_entry_fn+0xbc/0x1f0
> >> [c0000003fd9e7d50] [c0000000000c7cbc] .process_one_work+0x19c/0x590
> >> [c0000003fd9e7e10] [c0000000000c8618] .worker_thread+0x188/0x4b0
> >> [c0000003fd9e7ed0] [c0000000000ce57c] .kthread+0xbc/0xd0
> >> [c0000003fd9e7f90] [c000000000021448] .kernel_thread+0x54/0x70
> >> Instruction dump:
> >> 7fa3eb78 ebe1fff8 eba1ffe8 7c0803a6 4e800020 2c230000 41820024 e8630030 
> >> 7c800074 7800d182 2fa30000 419e0014 <0b000000> 38a00002 4bfffebc e8630030 
> >> ---[ end trace 31fd0ba7d8756001 ]---
> >> initcall .topology_init+0x0/0x1ac returned 0 after 0 usecs
> >> calling  .pcibios_init+0x0/0xe8 @ 1
> >> PCI: Probing PCI hardware
> >> PCI: Probing PCI hardware done
> >> initcall .pcibios_init+0x0/0xe8 returned 0 after 0 usecs
> >> calling  .add_system_ram_resources+0x0/0x140 @ 1
> >> initcall .add_system_ram_resources+0x0/0x140 returned 0 after 0 usecs
> >> calling  .__machine_initcall_powermac_pmac_i2c_create_platform_devices+0x0/0xc8 @ 1
> >> initcall .__machine_initcall_powermac_pmac_i2c_create_platform_devices+0x0/0xc8 returned 0 after 0 usecs
> >> calling  .opal_init+0x0/0x1cc @ 1
> >> opal: Node not found
> >> initcall .opal_init+0x0/0x1cc returned -19 after 0 usecs
> >> calling  .__machine_initcall_pseries_ioei_init+0x0/0xa0 @ 1
> > 
> > Reverting "smp: start up non-boot CPUs asynchronously" (8de7a96405 from
> > next-20120208) fixes this problem for me.  
> > 
> if that fixes it, it means PPC has a race somewhere in the cpu hotplug
> code, since all the patch does is hotplug the cpus one by one (which the
> normal kernel also does, just not in parallel with other work)

The bug looks pretty generic, nothing very PPC-specific there.  It
might affect other architectures - we won't know until we find out wht
caused it.

Ho hum, I suppose I should pull the patch out of linux-next, to avoid
disrupting other testing.  This means it's going to be hard to get the
bug fixed.