linux/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst, branch v5.8

panic: add sysctl to dump all CPUs backtraces on oops event

2020-06-08T18:05:56Z

Usually when the kernel reaches an oops condition, it's a point of no return; in case not enough debug information is available in the kernel splat, one of the last resorts would be to collect a kernel crash dump and analyze it. The problem with this approach is that in order to collect the dump, a panic is required (to kexec-load the crash kernel). When in an environment of multiple virtual machines, users may prefer to try living with the oops, at least until being able to properly shutdown their VMs / finish their important tasks. This patch implements a way to collect a bit more debug details when an oops event is reached, by printing all the CPUs backtraces through the usage of NMIs (on architectures that support that). The sysctl added (and documented) here was called "oops_all_cpu_backtrace", and when set will (as the name suggests) dump all CPUs backtraces. Far from ideal, this may be the last option though for users that for some reason cannot panic on oops. Most of times oopses are clear enough to indicate the kernel portion that must be investigated, but in virtual environments it's possible to observe hypervisor/KVM issues that could lead to oopses shown in other guests CPUs (like virtual APIC crashes). This patch hence aims to help debug such complex issues without resorting to kdump. Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Reviewed-by: Kees Cook Cc: Luis Chamberlain Cc: Iurii Zaikin Cc: Thomas Gleixner Cc: Vlastimil Babka Cc: Randy Dunlap Cc: Matthew Wilcox Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200327224116.21030-1-gpiccoli@canonical.com Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

kernel/hung_task.c: introduce sysctl to print all traces when a hung task is detected

2020-06-08T18:05:56Z

Commit 401c636a0eeb ("kernel/hung_task.c: show all hung tasks before panic") introduced a change in that we started to show all CPUs backtraces when a hung task is detected _and_ the sysctl/kernel parameter "hung_task_panic" is set. The idea is good, because usually when observing deadlocks (that may lead to hung tasks), the culprit is another task holding a lock and not necessarily the task detected as hung. The problem with this approach is that dumping backtraces is a slightly expensive task, specially printing that on console (and specially in many CPU machines, as servers commonly found nowadays). So, users that plan to collect a kdump to investigate the hung tasks and narrow down the deadlock definitely don't need the CPUs backtrace on dmesg/console, which will delay the panic and pollute the log (crash tool would easily grab all CPUs traces with 'bt -a' command). Also, there's the reciprocal scenario: some users may be interested in seeing the CPUs backtraces but not have the system panic when a hung task is detected. The current approach hence is almost as embedding a policy in the kernel, by forcing the CPUs backtraces' dump (only) on hung_task_panic. This patch decouples the panic event on hung task from the CPUs backtraces dump, by creating (and documenting) a new sysctl called "hung_task_all_cpu_backtrace", analog to the approach taken on soft/hard lockups, that have both a panic and an "all_cpu_backtrace" sysctl to allow individual control. The new mechanism for dumping the CPUs backtraces on hung task detection respects "hung_task_warnings" by not dumping the traces in case there's no warnings left. Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Reviewed-by: Kees Cook Cc: Tetsuo Handa Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200327223646.20779-1-gpiccoli@canonical.com Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

kernel: add panic_on_taint

2020-06-08T18:05:56Z

Analogously to the introduction of panic_on_warn, this patch introduces a kernel option named panic_on_taint in order to provide a simple and generic way to stop execution and catch a coredump when the kernel gets tainted by any given flag. This is useful for debugging sessions as it avoids having to rebuild the kernel to explicitly add calls to panic() into the code sites that introduce the taint flags of interest. For instance, if one is interested in proceeding with a post-mortem analysis at the point a given code path is hitting a bad page (i.e. unaccount_page_cache_page(), or slab_bug()), a coredump can be collected by rebooting the kernel with 'panic_on_taint=0x20' amended to the command line. Another, perhaps less frequent, use for this option would be as a means for assuring a security policy case where only a subset of taints, or no single taint (in paranoid mode), is allowed for the running system. The optional switch 'nousertaint' is handy in this particular scenario, as it will avoid userspace induced crashes by writes to sysctl interface /proc/sys/kernel/tainted causing false positive hits for such policies. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: tweak kernel-parameters.txt wording] Suggested-by: Qian Cai Signed-off-by: Rafael Aquini Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Reviewed-by: Luis Chamberlain Cc: Dave Young Cc: Baoquan He Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Randy Dunlap Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" Cc: Adrian Bunk Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman Cc: Laura Abbott Cc: Jeff Mahoney Cc: Jiri Kosina Cc: Takashi Iwai Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200515175502.146720-1-aquini@redhat.com Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

Merge tag 'docs-5.8' of git://git.lwn.net/linux

2020-06-01T22:45:27Z

Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet: "A fair amount of stuff this time around, dominated by yet another massive set from Mauro toward the completion of the RST conversion. I *really* hope we are getting close to the end of this. Meanwhile, those patches reach pretty far afield to update document references around the tree; there should be no actual code changes there. There will be, alas, more of the usual trivial merge conflicts. Beyond that we have more translations, improvements to the sphinx scripting, a number of additions to the sysctl documentation, and lots of fixes" * tag 'docs-5.8' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (130 commits) Documentation: fixes to the maintainer-entry-profile template zswap: docs/vm: Fix typo accept_threshold_percent in zswap.rst tracing: Fix events.rst section numbering docs: acpi: fix old http link and improve document format docs: filesystems: add info about efivars content Documentation: LSM: Correct the basic LSM description mailmap: change email for Ricardo Ribalda docs: sysctl/kernel: document unaligned controls Documentation: admin-guide: update bug-hunting.rst docs: sysctl/kernel: document ngroups_max nvdimm: fixes to maintainter-entry-profile Documentation/features: Correct RISC-V kprobes support entry Documentation/features: Refresh the arch support status files Revert "docs: sysctl/kernel: document ngroups_max" docs: move locking-specific documents to locking/ docs: move digsig docs to the security book docs: move the kref doc into the core-api book docs: add IRQ documentation at the core-api book docs: debugging-via-ohci1394.txt: add it to the core-api book docs: fix references for ipmi.rst file ...

docs: sysctl/kernel: document unaligned controls

2020-05-26T00:59:59Z

This documents ignore-unaligned-usertrap, unaligned-dump-stack, and unaligned-trap, based on arch/arc/kernel/unaligned.c, arch/ia64/kernel/unaligned.c, and arch/parisc/kernel/unaligned.c. While we're at it, integrate unaligned-memory-access.txt into the docs tree. Signed-off-by: Stephen Kitt Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200515212443.5012-1-steve@sk2.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

docs: sysctl/kernel: document ngroups_max

2020-05-26T00:59:58Z

This is a read-only export of NGROUPS_MAX. Signed-off-by: Stephen Kitt Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200518145836.15816-1-steve@sk2.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

Revert "docs: sysctl/kernel: document ngroups_max"

2020-05-18T12:19:25Z

This reverts commit 2f4c33063ad713e3a5b63002cf8362846e78bd71. The changes here were fine, but there's a non-documentation change to sysctl.c that makes messes elsewhere; those changes should have been done independently. Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

docs: sysctl/kernel: document ngroups_max

2020-05-15T17:24:25Z

This is a read-only export of NGROUPS_MAX, so this patch also changes the declarations in kernel/sysctl.c to const. Signed-off-by: Stephen Kitt Reviewed-by: Kees Cook Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200515160222.7994-1-steve@sk2.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

docs: sysctl/kernel: document firmware_config

2020-05-05T15:53:45Z

Based on the firmware fallback mechanisms documentation and the implementation in drivers/base/firmware_loader/fallback.c. Signed-off-by: Stephen Kitt Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200429205757.8677-2-steve@sk2.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet

docs: sysctl/kernel: document ftrace entries

2020-05-05T15:53:45Z

Based on the ftrace documentation, the tp_printk boot parameter documentation, and the implementation in kernel/trace/trace.c. Signed-off-by: Stephen Kitt Acked-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20200429205757.8677-1-steve@sk2.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet