kernel/linux.git/Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst, branch v6.19.11

sys_info: add a default kernel sys_info mask

2025-11-20T22:03:43+00:00

Which serves as a global default sys_info mask. When users want the same system information for many error cases (panic, hung, lockup ...), they can chose to set this global knob only once, while not setting up each individual sys_info knobs. This just adds a 'lazy' option, and doesn't change existing kernel behavior as the mask is 0 by default. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251113111039.22701-5-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Suggested-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Lance Yang Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Petr Mladek Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

watchdog: add sys_info sysctls to dump sys info on system lockup

2025-11-20T22:03:43+00:00

When soft/hard lockup happens, developers may need different kinds of system information (call-stacks, memory info, locks, etc.) to help debugging. Add 'softlockup_sys_info' and 'hardlockup_sys_info' sysctl knobs to take human readable string like "tasks,mem,timers,locks,ftrace,...", and when system lockup happens, all requested information will be printed out. (refer kernel/sys_info.c for more details). Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251113111039.22701-4-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Lance Yang Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Petr Mladek Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

hung_task: add hung_task_sys_info sysctl to dump sys info on task-hung

2025-11-20T22:03:43+00:00

When task-hung happens, developers may need different kinds of system information (call-stacks, memory info, locks, etc.) to help debugging. Add 'hung_task_sys_info' sysctl knob to take human readable string like "tasks,mem,timers,locks,ftrace,...", and when task-hung happens, all requested information will be dumped. (refer kernel/sys_info.c for more details). Meanwhile, the newly introduced sys_info() call is used to unify some existing info-dumping knobs. [feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com: maintain consistecy established behavior, per Lance and Petr] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/aRncJo1mA5Zk77Hr@U-2FWC9VHC-2323.local Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251113111039.22701-3-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Suggested-by: Petr Mladek Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek Reviewed-by: Lance Yang Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

docs: panic: correct some sys_ifo names in sysctl doc

2025-11-20T22:03:43+00:00

Patch series "Enable hung_task and lockup cases to dump system info on demand", v2. When working on kernel stability issues: panic, task-hung and soft/hard lockup are frequently met. And to debug them, user may need lots of system information at that time, like task call stacks, lock info, memory info, ftrace dump, etc. panic case already uses sys_info() for this purpose, and has a 'panic_sys_info' sysctl(also support cmdline setup) interface to take human readable string like "tasks,mem,timers,locks,ftrace,..." to control what kinds of information is needed. Which is also helpful to debug task-hung and lockup cases. So this patchset introduces the similar sys_info sysctl interface for task-hung and lockup cases. his is mainly for debugging and the info dumping could be intrusive, like dumping call stack for all tasks when system has huge number of tasks, similarly for ftrace dump (we may add tracing_stop() and tracing_start() around it) Locally these have been used in our bug chasing for stability issues and were helpful. As Andrew suggested, add a configurable global 'kernel_sys_info' knob. When error scenarios like panic/hung-task/lockup etc doesn't setup their own sys_info knob and calls sys_info() with parameter "0", this global knob will take effect. It could be used for other kernel cases like OOM, which may not need one dedicated sys_info knob. This patch (of 4): Some sys_info names wered forgotten to change in patch iterations, while the right names are defined in kernel/sys_info.c. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251113111039.22701-1-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251113111039.22701-2-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Fixes: d747755917bf ("panic: add 'panic_sys_info' sysctl to take human readable string parameter") Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Lance Yang Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

hung_task: panic when there are more than N hung tasks at the same time

2025-11-12T18:00:14+00:00

The hung_task_panic sysctl is currently a blunt instrument: it's all or nothing. Panicking on a single hung task can be an overreaction to a transient glitch. A more reliable indicator of a systemic problem is when multiple tasks hang simultaneously. Extend hung_task_panic to accept an integer threshold, allowing the kernel to panic only when N hung tasks are detected in a single scan. This provides finer control to distinguish between isolated incidents and system-wide failures. The accepted values are: - 0: Don't panic (unchanged) - 1: Panic on the first hung task (unchanged) - N > 1: Panic after N hung tasks are detected in a single scan The original behavior is preserved for values 0 and 1, maintaining full backward compatibility. [lance.yang@linux.dev: new changelog] Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251015063615.2632-1-lirongqing@baidu.com Signed-off-by: Li RongQing Reviewed-by: Masami Hiramatsu (Google) Reviewed-by: Lance Yang Tested-by: Lance Yang Acked-by: Andrew Jeffery [aspeed_g5_defconfig] Cc: Anshuman Khandual Cc: Arnd Bergmann Cc: David Hildenbrand Cc: Florian Wesphal Cc: Jakub Kacinski Cc: Jason A. Donenfeld Cc: Joel Granados Cc: Joel Stanley Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Kees Cook Cc: Liam Howlett Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Pawan Gupta Cc: Petr Mladek Cc: Phil Auld Cc: Randy Dunlap Cc: Russell King Cc: Shuah Khan Cc: Simon Horman Cc: Stanislav Fomichev Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

panic: refine the document for 'panic_print'

2025-09-14T00:32:50+00:00

User reported current document about SYS_INFO_PANIC_CONSOLE_REPLAY is confusing, that people could expect all user space console messages to be replayed. Specify that only 'kernel' messages will be replayed to solve the confusion. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250825025701.81921-3-feng.tang@linux.alibaba.com Signed-off-by: Feng Tang Reported-by: Askar Safin Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek Cc: John Ogness Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: Lance Yang Cc: "Paul E . McKenney" Cc: Steven Rostedt Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton

Merge tag 'mm-nonmm-stable-2025-08-03-12-47' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm

2025-08-03T23:23:09+00:00

Pull non-MM updates from Andrew Morton: "Significant patch series in this pull request: - "squashfs: Remove page->mapping references" (Matthew Wilcox) gets us closer to being able to remove page->mapping - "relayfs: misc changes" (Jason Xing) does some maintenance and minor feature addition work in relayfs - "kdump: crashkernel reservation from CMA" (Jiri Bohac) switches us from static preallocation of the kdump crashkernel's working memory over to dynamic allocation. So the difficulty of a-priori estimation of the second kernel's needs is removed and the first kernel obtains extra memory - "generalize panic_print's dump function to be used by other kernel parts" (Feng Tang) implements some consolidation and rationalization of the various ways in which a failing kernel splats information at the operator * tag 'mm-nonmm-stable-2025-08-03-12-47' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm: (80 commits) tools/getdelays: add backward compatibility for taskstats version kho: add test for kexec handover delaytop: enhance error logging and add PSI feature description samples: Kconfig: fix spelling mistake "instancess" -> "instances" fat: fix too many log in fat_chain_add() scripts/spelling.txt: add notifer||notifier to spelling.txt xen/xenbus: fix typo "notifer" net: mvneta: fix typo "notifer" drm/xe: fix typo "notifer" cxl: mce: fix typo "notifer" KVM: x86: fix typo "notifer" MAINTAINERS: add maintainers for delaytop ucount: use atomic_long_try_cmpxchg() in atomic_long_inc_below() ucount: fix atomic_long_inc_below() argument type kexec: enable CMA based contiguous allocation stackdepot: make max number of pools boot-time configurable lib/xxhash: remove unused functions init/Kconfig: restore CONFIG_BROKEN help text lib/raid6: update recov_rvv.c zero page usage docs: update docs after introducing delaytop ...

Merge tag 'docs-6.17' of git://git.lwn.net/linux

2025-07-31T15:36:51+00:00

Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet: "It has been a relatively busy cycle for docs, especially the build system: - The Perl kernel-doc script was added to 2.3.52pre1 just after the turn of the millennium. Over the following 25 years, it accumulated a vast amount of cruft, all in a language few people want to deal with anymore. Mauro's Python replacement in 6.16 faithfully reproduced all of the cruft in the hope of avoiding regressions. Now that we have a more reasonable code base, though, we can work on cleaning it up; many of the changes this time around are toward that end. - A reorganization of the ext4 docs into the usual TOC format. - Various Chinese translations and updates. - A new script from Mauro to help with docs-build testing. - A new document for linked lists - A sweep through MAINTAINERS fixing broken GitHub git:// repository links. ...and lots of fixes and updates" * tag 'docs-6.17' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (147 commits) scripts: add origin commit identification based on specific patterns sphinx: kernel_abi: fix performance regression with O= Documentation: core-api: entry: Replace deprecated KVM entry/exit functions docs: fault-injection: drop reference to md-faulty docs: document linked lists scripts: kdoc: make it backward-compatible with Python 3.7 docs: kernel-doc: emit warnings for ancient versions of Python Documentation/rtla: Describe exit status Documentation/rtla: Add include common_appendix.rst docs: kernel: Clarify printk_ratelimit_burst reset behavior Documentation: ioctl-number: Don't repeat macro names Documentation: ioctl-number: Shorten macros table Documentation: ioctl-number: Correct full path to papr-physical-attestation.h Documentation: ioctl-number: Extend "Include File" column width Documentation: ioctl-number: Fix linuxppc-dev mailto link overlayfs.rst: fix typos docs: kdoc: emit a warning for ancient versions of Python docs: kdoc: clean up check_sections() docs: kdoc: directly access the always-there KdocItem fields docs: kdoc: straighten up dump_declaration() ...

Merge tag 'sysctl-6.17-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sysctl/sysctl

2025-07-30T04:43:08+00:00

Pull sysctl updates from Joel Granados: - Move sysctls out of the kern_table array This is the final move of ctl_tables into their respective subsystems. Only 5 (out of the original 50) will remain in kernel/sysctl.c file; these handle either sysctl or common arch variables. By decentralizing sysctl registrations, subsystem maintainers regain control over their sysctl interfaces, improving maintainability and reducing the likelihood of merge conflicts. - docs: Remove false positives from check-sysctl-docs Stopped falsely identifying sysctls as undocumented or unimplemented in the check-sysctl-docs script. This script can now be used to automatically identify if documentation is missing. * tag 'sysctl-6.17-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/sysctl/sysctl: (23 commits) docs: Downgrade arm64 & riscv from titles to comment docs: Replace spaces with tabs in check-sysctl-docs docs: Remove colon from ctltable title in vm.rst docs: Add awk section for ucount sysctl entries docs: Use skiplist when checking sysctl admin-guide docs: nixify check-sysctl-docs sysctl: rename kern_table -> sysctl_subsys_table kernel/sys.c: Move overflow{uid,gid} sysctl into kernel/sys.c uevent: mv uevent_helper into kobject_uevent.c sysctl: Removed unused variable sysctl: Nixify sysctl.sh sysctl: Remove superfluous includes from kernel/sysctl.c sysctl: Remove (very) old file changelog sysctl: Move sysctl_panic_on_stackoverflow to kernel/panic.c sysctl: move cad_pid into kernel/pid.c sysctl: Move tainted ctl_table into kernel/panic.c Input: sysrq: mv sysrq into drivers/tty/sysrq.c fork: mv threads-max into kernel/fork.c parisc/power: Move soft-power into power.c mm: move randomize_va_space into memory.c ...

docs: Downgrade arm64 & riscv from titles to comment

2025-07-23T09:57:05+00:00

Remove the title string ("====") from under arm64 & riscv and move them to a commment under the perf_user_access sysctl. They are explanations, *not* sysctls themselves This effectively removes these two strings from appearing as not implemented when the check-sysctl-docs script is run Signed-off-by: Joel Granados