Re: [RFC][PATCH 5/5 v2] x86/nmi: Perform a safe NMI stack trace on all CPUs

From: Steven Rostedt
Date: Fri Jun 27 2014 - 10:41:07 EST


On Fri, 27 Jun 2014 16:32:46 +0200
Petr MlÃdek <pmladek@xxxxxxx> wrote:


> > +/*
> > + * It is not safe to call printk() directly from NMI handlers.
> > + * It may be fine if the NMI detected a lock up and we have no choice
> > + * but to do so, but doing a NMI on all other CPUs to get a back trace
> > + * can be done with a sysrq-l. We don't want that to lock up, which
> > + * can happen if the NMI interrupts a printk in progress.
> > + *
> > + * Instead, we redirect the vprintk() to this nmi_vprintk() that writes
> > + * the content into a per cpu seq_buf buffer. Then when the NMIs are
> > + * all done, we can safely dump the contents of the seq_buf to a printk()
> > + * from a non NMI context.
> > + */
>
> I would move this comment above #define NMI_BUF_SIZE
> It should be on top because it helps to understand many other tricks that are
> used above.
>

I have no problem with moving it. This started out as a simple comment
and then I just got carried away ;-)

-- Steve
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