kernel/watchdog: Prevent false positives with turbo modes

The hardlockup detector on x86 uses a performance counter based on unhalted
CPU cycles and a periodic hrtimer. The hrtimer period is about 2/5 of the
performance counter period, so the hrtimer should fire 2-3 times before the
performance counter NMI fires. The NMI code checks whether the hrtimer
fired since the last invocation. If not, it assumess a hard lockup.

The calculation of those periods is based on the nominal CPU
frequency. Turbo modes increase the CPU clock frequency and therefore
shorten the period of the perf/NMI watchdog. With extreme Turbo-modes (3x
nominal frequency) the perf/NMI period is shorter than the hrtimer period
which leads to false positives.

A simple fix would be to shorten the hrtimer period, but that comes with
the side effect of more frequent hrtimer and softlockup thread wakeups,
which is not desired.

Implement a low pass filter, which checks the perf/NMI period against
kernel time. If the perf/NMI fires before 4/5 of the watchdog period has
elapsed then the event is ignored and postponed to the next perf/NMI.

That solves the problem and avoids the overhead of shorter hrtimer periods
and more frequent softlockup thread wakeups.

Fixes: 58687acba592 ("lockup_detector: Combine nmi_watchdog and softlockup detector")
Reported-and-tested-by: Kan Liang <Kan.liang@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: dzickus@redhat.com
Cc: prarit@redhat.com
Cc: ak@linux.intel.com
Cc: babu.moger@oracle.com
Cc: peterz@infradead.org
Cc: eranian@google.com
Cc: acme@redhat.com
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Cc: atomlin@redhat.com
Cc: akpm@linux-foundation.org
Cc: torvalds@linux-foundation.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.20.1708150931310.1886@nanos

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/nmi.h b/include/linux/nmi.h
index 8aa01fd859fb..a36abe2da13e 100644
--- a/include/linux/nmi.h
+++ b/include/linux/nmi.h
@@ -168,6 +168,14 @@ extern int sysctl_hardlockup_all_cpu_backtrace;
 #define sysctl_softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace 0
 #define sysctl_hardlockup_all_cpu_backtrace 0
 #endif
+
+#if defined(CONFIG_HARDLOCKUP_CHECK_TIMESTAMP) && \
+    defined(CONFIG_HARDLOCKUP_DETECTOR)
+void watchdog_update_hrtimer_threshold(u64 period);
+#else
+static inline void watchdog_update_hrtimer_threshold(u64 period) { }
+#endif
+
 extern bool is_hardlockup(void);
 struct ctl_table;
 extern int proc_watchdog(struct ctl_table *, int ,