Re: [PACTH v1] kernel/hung_task.c: Dump all UNINTERUPTIBLE tasks

[Tetsuo Handa]

Robert Foss wrote:
> From: Aaron Durbin <adurbin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> When the panic path is taken for khungtaskd dump all
> tasks with the UNINTERUPTIBLE state. That way, any
> inter-dependent tasks that caused one another to hang
> will be saved in the crash output.

How useful do you think this change is? If kdump is configured, you
can obtain the same information from vmcore using crash utility. If
kdump is not configured, it might be so in order to reboot as quick
as possible using panic_timeout < 0.

Also, from my experience, inter-dependent tasks are not always blocked
in UNINTERUPTIBLE state. If they are AB-BA deadlock, this change will
help only when they are waiting using unkillable version of wait
primitives. I think most of simple AB-BA deadlocks are detected by
lockdep and fixed by now. An example where kswapd is reported as a
hung task ( http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160211225929.GU14668@dastard ) is
AB-BA deadlock which lockdep can't detect and inter-dependent tasks are
not blocked for long in UNINTERUPTIBLE state.

Also, slide 18 of http://I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp/tomoyo/LCJ2014-en.pdf uses
SystemTap to install a hook for SysRq-t when a hung task is reported.
You will be able to run SysRq-w using it.

I don't NACK this patch. But I think this patch could be conditional (e.g.
show_state_filter(0) if sysctl_hung_task_panic == 2 and
show_state_filter(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE) if sysctl_hung_task_panic == 3)
for environment where SystemTap can't be used.

> 
> Signed-off-by: Aaron Durbin <adurbin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Tested-by: Robert Foss <robert.foss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Robert Foss <robert.foss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  kernel/hung_task.c | 2 ++
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/hung_task.c b/kernel/hung_task.c
> index d234022..946caf9 100644
> --- a/kernel/hung_task.c
> +++ b/kernel/hung_task.c
> @@ -122,6 +122,8 @@ static void check_hung_task(struct task_struct *t, unsigned long timeout)
>  	touch_nmi_watchdog();
>  
>  	if (sysctl_hung_task_panic) {
> +		/* Dump all tasks. */
> +		show_state_filter(TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE);
>  		trigger_all_cpu_backtrace();
>  		panic("hung_task: blocked tasks");
>  	}
> -- 
> 2.7.4
> 
>