kernel/watchdog: prevent false hardlockup on overloaded system

On an overloaded system, it is possible that a change in the watchdog
threshold can be delayed long enough to trigger a false positive.

This can easily be achieved by having a cpu spinning indefinitely on a
task, while another cpu updates watchdog threshold.

What happens is while trying to park the watchdog threads, the hrtimers
on the other cpus trigger and reprogram themselves with the new slower
watchdog threshold.  Meanwhile, the nmi watchdog is still programmed
with the old faster threshold.

Because the one cpu is blocked, it prevents the thread parking on the
other cpus from completing, which is needed to shutdown the nmi watchdog
and reprogram it correctly.  As a result, a false positive from the nmi
watchdog is reported.

Fix this by setting a park_in_progress flag to block all lockups until
the parking is complete.

Fix provided by Ulrich Obergfell.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: s/park_in_progress/watchdog_park_in_progress/]
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1481041033-192236-1-git-send-email-dzickus@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Cc: Ulrich Obergfell <uobergfe@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

1 files changed, 9 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/watchdog.c b/kernel/watchdog.c
index d4b0fa0..63177be 100644
--- a/kernel/watchdog.c
+++ b/kernel/watchdog.c
@@ -49,6 +49,8 @@ unsigned long *watchdog_cpumask_bits = cpumask_bits(&watchdog_cpumask);
 #define for_each_watchdog_cpu(cpu) \
 	for_each_cpu_and((cpu), cpu_online_mask, &watchdog_cpumask)
 
+atomic_t watchdog_park_in_progress = ATOMIC_INIT(0);
+
 /*
  * The 'watchdog_running' variable is set to 1 when the watchdog threads
  * are registered/started and is set to 0 when the watchdog threads are
@@ -260,6 +262,9 @@ static enum hrtimer_restart watchdog_timer_fn(struct hrtimer *hrtimer)
 	int duration;
 	int softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace = sysctl_softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace;
 
+	if (atomic_read(&watchdog_park_in_progress) != 0)
+		return HRTIMER_NORESTART;
+
 	/* kick the hardlockup detector */
 	watchdog_interrupt_count();
 
@@ -467,12 +472,16 @@ static int watchdog_park_threads(void)
 {
 	int cpu, ret = 0;
 
+	atomic_set(&watchdog_park_in_progress, 1);
+
 	for_each_watchdog_cpu(cpu) {
 		ret = kthread_park(per_cpu(softlockup_watchdog, cpu));
 		if (ret)
 			break;
 	}
 
+	atomic_set(&watchdog_park_in_progress, 0);
+
 	return ret;
 }