user/sven/linux.git/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt, branch v3.18.48

coredump: add %i/%I in core_pattern to report the tid of the crashed thread

2014-10-14T00:18:21Z

format_corename() can only pass the leader's pid to the core handler, but there is no simple way to figure out which thread originated the coredump. As Jan explains, this also means that there is no simple way to create the backtrace of the crashed process: As programs are mostly compiled with implicit gcc -fomit-frame-pointer one needs program's .eh_frame section (equivalently PT_GNU_EH_FRAME segment) or .debug_frame section. .debug_frame usually is present only in separate debug info files usually not even installed on the system. While .eh_frame is a part of the executable/library (and it is even always mapped for C++ exceptions unwinding) it no longer has to be present anywhere on the disk as the program could be upgraded in the meantime and the running instance has its executable file already unlinked from disk. One possibility is to echo 0x3f >/proc/*/coredump_filter and dump all the file-backed memory including the executable's .eh_frame section. But that can create huge core files, for example even due to mmapped data files. Other possibility would be to read .eh_frame from /proc/PID/mem at the core_pattern handler time of the core dump. For the backtrace one needs to read the register state first which can be done from core_pattern handler: ptrace(PTRACE_SEIZE, tid, 0, PTRACE_O_TRACEEXIT) close(0); // close pipe fd to resume the sleeping dumper waitpid(); // should report EXIT PTRACE_GETREGS or other requests The remaining problem is how to get the 'tid' value of the crashed thread. It could be read from the first NT_PRSTATUS note of the core file but that makes the core_pattern handler complicated. Unfortunately %t is already used so this patch uses %i/%I. Automatic Bug Reporting Tool (https://github.com/abrt/abrt/wiki/overview) is experimenting with this. It is using the elfutils (https://fedorahosted.org/elfutils/) unwinder for generating the backtraces. Apart from not needing matching executables as mentioned above, another advantage is that we can get the backtrace without saving the core (which might be quite large) to disk. [mmilata@redhat.com: final paragraph of changelog] Signed-off-by: Jan Kratochvil Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Alexander Viro Cc: Denys Vlasenko Cc: Jan Kratochvil Cc: Mark Wielaard Cc: Martin Milata Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

panic: add TAINT_SOFTLOCKUP

2014-08-08T22:57:24Z

This taint flag will be set if the system has ever entered a softlockup state. Similar to TAINT_WARN it is useful to know whether or not the system has been in a softlockup state when debugging. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: apply the taint before calling panic()] Signed-off-by: Josh Hunt Cc: Jason Baron Cc: Randy Dunlap Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

kernel/watchdog.c: print traces for all cpus on lockup detection

2014-06-23T23:47:44Z

A 'softlockup' is defined as a bug that causes the kernel to loop in kernel mode for more than a predefined period to time, without giving other tasks a chance to run. Currently, upon detection of this condition by the per-cpu watchdog task, debug information (including a stack trace) is sent to the system log. On some occasions, we have observed that the "victim" rather than the actual "culprit" (i.e. the owner/holder of the contended resource) is reported to the user. Often this information has proven to be insufficient to assist debugging efforts. To avoid loss of useful debug information, for architectures which support NMI, this patch makes it possible to improve soft lockup reporting. This is accomplished by issuing an NMI to each cpu to obtain a stack trace. If NMI is not supported we just revert back to the old method. A sysctl and boot-time parameter is available to toggle this feature. [dzickus@redhat.com: add CONFIG_SMP in certain areas] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: additional CONFIG_SMP=n optimisations] [mq@suse.cz: fix warning] Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin Signed-off-by: Don Zickus Cc: David S. Miller Cc: Mateusz Guzik Cc: Oleg Nesterov Signed-off-by: Jan Moskyto Matejka Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

sysctl: allow for strict write position handling

2014-06-06T23:08:13Z

When writing to a sysctl string, each write, regardless of VFS position, begins writing the string from the start. This means the contents of the last write to the sysctl controls the string contents instead of the first: open("/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe", O_WRONLY) = 1 write(1, "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"..., 4096) = 4096 write(1, "/bin/true", 9) = 9 close(1) = 0 $ cat /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe /bin/true Expected behaviour would be to have the sysctl be "AAAA..." capped at maxlen (in this case KMOD_PATH_LEN: 256), instead of truncating to the contents of the second write. Similarly, multiple short writes would not append to the sysctl. The old behavior is unlike regular POSIX files enough that doing audits of software that interact with sysctls can end up in unexpected or dangerous situations. For example, "as long as the input starts with a trusted path" turns out to be an insufficient filter, as what must also happen is for the input to be entirely contained in a single write syscall -- not a common consideration, especially for high level tools. This provides kernel.sysctl_writes_strict as a way to make this behavior act in a less surprising manner for strings, and disallows non-zero file position when writing numeric sysctls (similar to what is already done when reading from non-zero file positions). For now, the default (0) is to warn about non-zero file position use, but retain the legacy behavior. Setting this to -1 disables the warning, and setting this to 1 enables the file position respecting behavior. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: move misplaced hunk, per Randy] Signed-off-by: Kees Cook Cc: Randy Dunlap Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

hung_task: check the value of "sysctl_hung_task_timeout_sec"

2014-04-07T23:36:07Z

As sysctl_hung_task_timeout_sec is unsigned long, when this value is larger then LONG_MAX/HZ, the function schedule_timeout_interruptible in watchdog will return immediately without sleep and with print : schedule_timeout: wrong timeout value ffffffffffffff83 and then the funtion watchdog will call schedule_timeout_interruptible again and again. The screen will be filled with "schedule_timeout: wrong timeout value ffffffffffffff83" This patch does some check and correction in sysctl, to let the function schedule_timeout_interruptible allways get the valid parameter. Signed-off-by: Liu Hua Tested-by: Satoru Takeuchi Cc: [3.4+] Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Merge tag 'modules-next-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux

2014-04-06T16:38:07Z

Pull module updates from Rusty Russell: "Nothing major: the stricter permissions checking for sysfs broke a staging driver; fix included. Greg KH said he'd take the patch but hadn't as the merge window opened, so it's included here to avoid breaking build" * tag 'modules-next-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux: staging: fix up speakup kobject mode Use 'E' instead of 'X' for unsigned module taint flag. VERIFY_OCTAL_PERMISSIONS: stricter checking for sysfs perms. kallsyms: fix percpu vars on x86-64 with relocation. kallsyms: generalize address range checking module: LLVMLinux: Remove unused function warning from __param_check macro Fix: module signature vs tracepoints: add new TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE module: remove MODULE_GENERIC_TABLE module: allow multiple calls to MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE() per module module: use pr_cont

Merge branch 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

2014-03-31T18:21:19Z

Pull scheduler changes from Ingo Molnar: "Bigger changes: - sched/idle restructuring: they are WIP preparation for deeper integration between the scheduler and idle state selection, by Nicolas Pitre. - add NUMA scheduling pseudo-interleaving, by Rik van Riel. - optimize cgroup context switches, by Peter Zijlstra. - RT scheduling enhancements, by Thomas Gleixner. The rest is smaller changes, non-urgnt fixes and cleanups" * 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (68 commits) sched: Clean up the task_hot() function sched: Remove double calculation in fix_small_imbalance() sched: Fix broken setscheduler() sparc64, sched: Remove unused sparc64_multi_core sched: Remove unused mc_capable() and smt_capable() sched/numa: Move task_numa_free() to __put_task_struct() sched/fair: Fix endless loop in idle_balance() sched/core: Fix endless loop in pick_next_task() sched/fair: Push down check for high priority class task into idle_balance() sched/rt: Fix picking RT and DL tasks from empty queue trace: Replace hardcoding of 19 with MAX_NICE sched: Guarantee task priority in pick_next_task() sched/idle: Remove stale old file sched: Put rq's sched_avg under CONFIG_FAIR_GROUP_SCHED cpuidle/arm64: Remove redundant cpuidle_idle_call() cpuidle/powernv: Remove redundant cpuidle_idle_call() sched, nohz: Exclude isolated cores from load balancing sched: Fix select_task_rq_fair() description comments workqueue: Replace hardcoding of -20 and 19 with MIN_NICE and MAX_NICE sys: Replace hardcoding of -20 and 19 with MIN_NICE and MAX_NICE ...

Fix: module signature vs tracepoints: add new TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE

2014-03-13T01:41:51Z

Users have reported being unable to trace non-signed modules loaded within a kernel supporting module signature. This is caused by tracepoint.c:tracepoint_module_coming() refusing to take into account tracepoints sitting within force-loaded modules (TAINT_FORCED_MODULE). The reason for this check, in the first place, is that a force-loaded module may have a struct module incompatible with the layout expected by the kernel, and can thus cause a kernel crash upon forced load of that module on a kernel with CONFIG_TRACEPOINTS=y. Tracepoints, however, specifically accept TAINT_OOT_MODULE and TAINT_CRAP, since those modules do not lead to the "very likely system crash" issue cited above for force-loaded modules. With kernels having CONFIG_MODULE_SIG=y (signed modules), a non-signed module is tainted re-using the TAINT_FORCED_MODULE taint flag. Unfortunately, this means that Tracepoints treat that module as a force-loaded module, and thus silently refuse to consider any tracepoint within this module. Since an unsigned module does not fit within the "very likely system crash" category of tainting, add a new TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE taint flag to specifically address this taint behavior, and accept those modules within Tracepoints. We use the letter 'X' as a taint flag character for a module being loaded that doesn't know how to sign its name (proposed by Steven Rostedt). Also add the missing 'O' entry to trace event show_module_flags() list for the sake of completeness. Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers Acked-by: Steven Rostedt NAKed-by: Ingo Molnar CC: Thomas Gleixner CC: David Howells CC: Greg Kroah-Hartman Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell

Merge branch 'core/urgent' into core/locking

2014-02-27T12:06:55Z

It's not really a regression fix, so move it to the v3.15 queue. Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

Merge branch 'linus' into sched/core, to resolve conflicts

2014-02-02T08:45:39Z

Conflicts: kernel/sysctl.c Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar