Re: [PATCH 1/5] HWPOISON: define VM_FAULT_HWPOISON to 0 when feature is disabled

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Mon Jun 15 2009 - 02:52:51 EST


On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 05:35:01PM +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
>
> * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, 12 Jun 2009, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> > >
> > > This seems like trying to handle a failure mode that cannot be
> > > and shouldnt be 'handled' really. If there's an 'already
> > > corrupted' page then the box should go down hard and fast, and
> > > we should not risk _even more user data corruption_ by trying to
> > > 'continue' in the hope of having hit some 'harmless' user
> > > process that can be killed ...
> >
> > No, the box should _not_ go down hard-and-fast. That's the last
> > thing we should *ever* do.
> >
> > We need to log it. Often at a user level (ie we want to make sure
> > it actually hits syslog, possibly goes out the network, maybe pops
> > up a window, whatever).
> >
> > Shutting down the machine is the last thing we ever want to do.
> >
> > The whole "let's panic" mentality is a disease.
>
> No doubt about that - and i'm removing BUG_ON()s and panic()s
> wherever i can and havent added a single new one myself in the past
> 5 years or so, its a disease.

In HA failover systems you often do want to panic ASAP (after logging
to serial cosole I guess) if anything like this happens so the system
can be rebooted with minimal chance of data corruption spreading.

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