[RFC PATCH] watchdog: Add hook for kicking in kdump path

[Dave Young]

On 04/06/2013 04:16 AM, Don Zickus wrote:
> A common problem with kdump is that during the boot up of the
> second kernel, the hardware watchdog times out and reboots the
> machine before a vmcore can be captured.
> 
> Instead of tellling customers to disable their hardware watchdog
> timers, I hacked up a hook to put in the kdump path that provides
> one last kick before jumping into the second kernel.
> 
> The assumption is the watchdog timeout is at least 10-30 seconds
> long, enough to get the second kernel to userspace to kick the watchdog
> again, if needed.

For kdump kernel some devices need to reset, this might increase the
boot time, it's not so reliable for the 10-30s for us to kicking the
watchdog.

Could we have another option to disable/stop the watchdog while panic
happens? Ie. add a kernel cmdline panic_stop_wd=<0|1> for 1st kernel, if
it's set to 1, then just stop the watchdog or we can kick the watchdog
like what you do in this patch. Of course stopping watchdog should be
lockless as well..

> 
> Of course kdump is usually executed on a panic path, so grabbing the
> watchdog mutexes to communicate with the hardware won't work.  For now,
> I do everything locklessly.
> 
> I can attempt a 'mutex_trylock' but not sure what to do in the failure
> case?  spin up to a second?
> 
> This patch is more of a proof of concept right now.  Hopefully feedback
> will help solve this problem better.
> 
> I have tested this with a machine using iTCO_wdt and the 'watchdog' app.
> The extra kicked happened as expected.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus at redhat.com>
> ---
>  drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c |   35 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  include/linux/watchdog.h        |    7 +++++++
>  kernel/kexec.c                  |    6 ++++++
>  3 files changed, 48 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c b/drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c
> index 08b48bb..6393572 100644
> --- a/drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c
> +++ b/drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c
> @@ -84,6 +84,41 @@ out_ping:
>  }
>  
>  /*
> + *	watchdog_kick_for_kdump: kick the watchdog in the kdump path
> + *
> + * 	The kdump path needs time to reboot the kernel back into
> + * 	userspace.  This window is big enough the hardware watchdog
> + * 	may come in and reboot the box.  This hook gives the watchdog
> + * 	one final kick to get kdump over the hump.
> + *
> + * 	We don't know what devices are open, so just use the legacy
> + * 	interface for now.  We have to do this locklessly as we can
> + * 	not wait.
> + */
> +
> +void watchdog_kick_for_kdump(void)
> +{
> +	struct watchdog_device *wddev = old_wdd;
> +
> +	/* FIXME - Perhaps use a mutex_trylock? */
> +
> +	if (!wddev)
> +		return;
> +
> +	if (test_bit(WDOG_UNREGISTERED, &wddev->status))
> +		return;
> +
> +	if (!watchdog_active(wddev))
> +		return;
> +
> +	if (wddev->ops->ping)
> +		wddev->ops->ping(wddev);  /* ping the watchdog */
> +	else
> +		wddev->ops->start(wddev); /* restart watchdog */
> +}
> +EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(watchdog_kick_for_kdump);
> +
> +/*
>   *	watchdog_start: wrapper to start the watchdog.
>   *	@wddev: the watchdog device to start
>   *
> diff --git a/include/linux/watchdog.h b/include/linux/watchdog.h
> index 2a3038e..5dff975 100644
> --- a/include/linux/watchdog.h
> +++ b/include/linux/watchdog.h
> @@ -142,4 +142,11 @@ extern int watchdog_init_timeout(struct watchdog_device *wdd,
>  extern int watchdog_register_device(struct watchdog_device *);
>  extern void watchdog_unregister_device(struct watchdog_device *);
>  
> +#ifdef CONFIG_WATCHDOG_CORE
> +/* drivers/watchdog/watchdog_dev.c */
> +extern void watchdog_kick_for_kdump(void);
> +#else
> +static inline void watchdog_kick_for_kdump(void) { };
> +#endif
> +
>  #endif  /* ifndef _LINUX_WATCHDOG_H */
> diff --git a/kernel/kexec.c b/kernel/kexec.c
> index bddd3d7..ced7ccd 100644
> --- a/kernel/kexec.c
> +++ b/kernel/kexec.c
> @@ -32,6 +32,7 @@
>  #include <linux/vmalloc.h>
>  #include <linux/swap.h>
>  #include <linux/syscore_ops.h>
> +#include <linux/watchdog.h>
>  
>  #include <asm/page.h>
>  #include <asm/uaccess.h>
> @@ -1094,6 +1095,11 @@ void crash_kexec(struct pt_regs *regs)
>  		if (kexec_crash_image) {
>  			struct pt_regs fixed_regs;
>  
> +			/*
> +			 * Give panic path a chance to do its post processing
> +			 */
> +			watchdog_kick_for_kdump();
> +
>  			crash_setup_regs(&fixed_regs, regs);
>  			crash_save_vmcoreinfo();
>  			machine_crash_shutdown(&fixed_regs);
> 


-- 
Thanks
Dave