Hi, I've notice this hang on bootup every so often. Sometimes it hangs for a second and sometimes it can hang for hours. Always at the same location. This is a soft hang. That is, interrupts are still enabled, and I'm able to perform a sysrq-t.
Here's the problem child: Call Trace: [<c062cd67>] schedule_timeout+0x75/0x93 [<c062cd9f>] schedule_timeout_uninterruptible+0x1a/0x1c [<c043ca12>] msleep+0x15/0x1b [<c0407726>] cpu_idle_wait+0x80/0xe0 [<c05bbfa7>] cpuidle_uninstall_idle_handler+0x28/0x2a [<c05bc148>] cpuidle_switch_governor+0x20/0xd9 [<c05bc2eb>] cpuidle_register_governor+0x6d/0xa6 [<c076fb04>] init_menu+0x12/0x14 [<c074e535>] kernel_init+0x154/0x2d1 [<c0409dc7>] kernel_thread_helper+0x7/0x10 This happens after it installed cpu_idle_ladder, and later while installing cpu_idle_menu it hangs. But it's not the menu that is the problem. But it looks like the cpu_idle_wait is. In cpu_idle from process_32.c we have: while (!need_resched()) { void (*idle)(void); if (__get_cpu_var(cpu_idle_state)) __get_cpu_var(cpu_idle_state) = 0; check_pgt_cache(); rmb(); idle = pm_idle; if (!idle) idle = default_idle; if (cpu_is_offline(cpu)) play_dead(); __get_cpu_var(irq_stat).idle_timestamp = jiffies; idle(); } and in cpu_idle_wait: set_cpus_allowed(current, cpumask_of_cpu(this_cpu)); put_cpu(); cpus_clear(map); for_each_online_cpu(cpu) { per_cpu(cpu_idle_state, cpu) = 1; cpu_set(cpu, map); } __get_cpu_var(cpu_idle_state) = 0; wmb(); do { ssleep(1); for_each_online_cpu(cpu) { if (cpu_isset(cpu, map) && !per_cpu(cpu_idle_state, cpu)) cpu_clear(cpu, map); } cpus_and(map, map, cpu_online_map); } while (!cpus_empty(map)); Basically, we set cpu_idle_state to one for each online cpu. Clear the cpu that is currently running. Then keep sleeping and wait till each cpu passes the cpu_idle and clears the cpu_idle_state per_cpu variable. The problem I see here, especially in boot up, is that it doesn't check to see if a cpu is already idle. So if a CPU is idle and NO_HZ is set (yes I have that set), we can shut down an online CPU if there's no interrupts to run nor any threads to run. Which is the case on bootup. I first thought about adding an "in_idle" per_cpu variable to check, but then I'm thinking that this can cause other races. Because this is used in the idle governor code, and that code can also be a module, we might remove the idle code when CPUS are still using it. So perhaps a simple smp_call_function to an empty function might be good enough. Something like this? --- arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) Index: linux-compile-i386.git/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c =================================================================== --- linux-compile-i386.git.orig/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c 2008-01-03 17:25:46.000000000 -0500 +++ linux-compile-i386.git/arch/x86/kernel/process_32.c 2008-01-07 11:15:39.000000000 -0500 @@ -204,6 +204,10 @@ void cpu_idle(void) } } +static void do_nothing(void *unused) +{ +} + void cpu_idle_wait(void) { unsigned int cpu, this_cpu = get_cpu(); @@ -221,6 +225,10 @@ void cpu_idle_wait(void) __get_cpu_var(cpu_idle_state) = 0; wmb(); + + /* make sure all CPUs are awake */ + smp_call_function(do_nothing, NULL, 0, 0); + do { ssleep(1); for_each_online_cpu(cpu) { Thoughts? Disclaimer: I've been seeing this when working with the mcount patches. So I haven't seen it on a vanilla git repo. But... I haven't been booting vanilla git repos, and this hang doesn't look related to mcount. Another problem is that this hang only happens once every 100 boots or so. -- Steve -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/