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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/vm/hwpoison.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/vm/hwpoison.txt b/Documentation/vm/hwpoison.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..3ffadf8da61 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/vm/hwpoison.txt @@ -0,0 +1,136 @@ +What is hwpoison? + +Upcoming Intel CPUs have support for recovering from some memory errors +(``MCA recovery''). This requires the OS to declare a page "poisoned", +kill the processes associated with it and avoid using it in the future. + +This patchkit implements the necessary infrastructure in the VM. + +To quote the overview comment: + + * High level machine check handler. Handles pages reported by the + * hardware as being corrupted usually due to a 2bit ECC memory or cache + * failure. + * + * This focusses on pages detected as corrupted in the background. + * When the current CPU tries to consume corruption the currently + * running process can just be killed directly instead. This implies + * that if the error cannot be handled for some reason it's safe to + * just ignore it because no corruption has been consumed yet. Instead + * when that happens another machine check will happen. + * + * Handles page cache pages in various states. The tricky part + * here is that we can access any page asynchronous to other VM + * users, because memory failures could happen anytime and anywhere, + * possibly violating some of their assumptions. This is why this code + * has to be extremely careful. Generally it tries to use normal locking + * rules, as in get the standard locks, even if that means the + * error handling takes potentially a long time. + * + * Some of the operations here are somewhat inefficient and have non + * linear algorithmic complexity, because the data structures have not + * been optimized for this case. This is in particular the case + * for the mapping from a vma to a process. Since this case is expected + * to be rare we hope we can get away with this. + +The code consists of a the high level handler in mm/memory-failure.c, +a new page poison bit and various checks in the VM to handle poisoned +pages. + +The main target right now is KVM guests, but it works for all kinds +of applications. KVM support requires a recent qemu-kvm release. + +For the KVM use there was need for a new signal type so that +KVM can inject the machine check into the guest with the proper +address. This in theory allows other applications to handle +memory failures too. The expection is that near all applications +won't do that, but some very specialized ones might. + +--- + +There are two (actually three) modi memory failure recovery can be in: + +vm.memory_failure_recovery sysctl set to zero: + All memory failures cause a panic. Do not attempt recovery. + (on x86 this can be also affected by the tolerant level of the + MCE subsystem) + +early kill + (can be controlled globally and per process) + Send SIGBUS to the application as soon as the error is detected + This allows applications who can process memory errors in a gentle + way (e.g. drop affected object) + This is the mode used by KVM qemu. + +late kill + Send SIGBUS when the application runs into the corrupted page. + This is best for memory error unaware applications and default + Note some pages are always handled as late kill. + +--- + +User control: + +vm.memory_failure_recovery + See sysctl.txt + +vm.memory_failure_early_kill + Enable early kill mode globally + +PR_MCE_KILL + Set early/late kill mode/revert to system default + arg1: PR_MCE_KILL_CLEAR: Revert to system default + arg1: PR_MCE_KILL_SET: arg2 defines thread specific mode + PR_MCE_KILL_EARLY: Early kill + PR_MCE_KILL_LATE: Late kill + PR_MCE_KILL_DEFAULT: Use system global default +PR_MCE_KILL_GET + return current mode + + +--- + +Testing: + +madvise(MADV_POISON, ....) + (as root) + Poison a page in the process for testing + + +hwpoison-inject module through debugfs + /sys/debug/hwpoison/corrupt-pfn + +Inject hwpoison fault at PFN echoed into this file + + +Architecture specific MCE injector + +x86 has mce-inject, mce-test + +Some portable hwpoison test programs in mce-test, see blow. + +--- + +References: + +http://halobates.de/mce-lc09-2.pdf + Overview presentation from LinuxCon 09 + +git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/cpu/mce/mce-test.git + Test suite (hwpoison specific portable tests in tsrc) + +git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/cpu/mce/mce-inject.git + x86 specific injector + + +--- + +Limitations: + +- Not all page types are supported and never will. Most kernel internal +objects cannot be recovered, only LRU pages for now. +- Right now hugepage support is missing. + +--- +Andi Kleen, Oct 2009 + |