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authorJeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org>2006-12-08 02:36:19 -0800
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@woody.osdl.org>2006-12-08 08:28:39 -0800
commit7664c5a1da4711bb6383117f51b94c8dc8f3f1cd (patch)
tree79a2e2a4626c66a411488b5ceb554b011d862a7d /Documentation/stallion.txt
parentc48f70c3d046f021b1c22438604ef2a583380eca (diff)
[PATCH] Generic BUG implementation
This patch adds common handling for kernel BUGs, for use by architectures as they wish. The code is derived from arch/powerpc. The advantages of having common BUG handling are: - consistent BUG reporting across architectures - shared implementation of out-of-line file/line data - implement CONFIG_DEBUG_BUGVERBOSE consistently This means that in inline impact of BUG is just the illegal instruction itself, which is an improvement for i386 and x86-64. A BUG is represented in the instruction stream as an illegal instruction, which has file/line information associated with it. This extra information is stored in the __bug_table section in the ELF file. When the kernel gets an illegal instruction, it first confirms it might possibly be from a BUG (ie, in kernel mode, the right illegal instruction). It then calls report_bug(). This searches __bug_table for a matching instruction pointer, and if found, prints the corresponding file/line information. If report_bug() determines that it wasn't a BUG which caused the trap, it returns BUG_TRAP_TYPE_NONE. Some architectures (powerpc) implement WARN using the same mechanism; if the illegal instruction was the result of a WARN, then report_bug(Q) returns CONFIG_DEBUG_BUGVERBOSE; otherwise it returns BUG_TRAP_TYPE_BUG. lib/bug.c keeps a list of loaded modules which can be searched for __bug_table entries. The architecture must call module_bug_finalize()/module_bug_cleanup() from its corresponding module_finalize/cleanup functions. Unsetting CONFIG_DEBUG_BUGVERBOSE will reduce the kernel size by some amount. At the very least, filename and line information will not be recorded for each but, but architectures may decide to store no extra information per BUG at all. Unfortunately, gcc doesn't have a general way to mark an asm() as noreturn, so architectures will generally have to include an infinite loop (or similar) in the BUG code, so that gcc knows execution won't continue beyond that point. gcc does have a __builtin_trap() operator which may be useful to achieve the same effect, unfortunately it cannot be used to actually implement the BUG itself, because there's no way to get the instruction's address for use in generating the __bug_table entry. [randy.dunlap@oracle.com: Handle BUG=n, GENERIC_BUG=n to prevent build errors] [bunk@stusta.de: include/linux/bug.h must always #include <linux/module.h] Signed-off-by: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy@goop.org> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> Cc: Hugh Dickens <hugh@veritas.com> Cc: Michael Ellerman <michael@ellerman.id.au> Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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