[PATCH RFC 1/2] coding-style.rst: document BUG() and WARN() rules ("do not crash the kernel")

[David Hildenbrand]

On 29.08.22 05:07, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 6:56 PM Dave Young <dyoung at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>> John mentioned PANIC_ON().
>>
>> I would vote for PANIC_ON(), it sounds like a good idea, because
>> BUG_ON() is not obvious and, PANIC_ON() can alert the code author that
>> this will cause a kernel panic and one will be more careful before
>> using it.
> 
> People, NO.
> 
> We're trying to get rid of BUG_ON() because it kills the machine.
> 
> Not replace it with another bogus thing that kills a machine.
> 
> So no PANIC_ON(). We used to have "panic()" many many years ago, we
> got rid of it. We're not re-introducing it.
> 
> People who want to panic on warnings can do so. WARN_ON() _becomes_
> PANIC for those people. But those people are the "we have a million
> machines, we want to just fail things on any sign of trouble, and we
> have MIS people who can look at the logs".
> 
> And it's not like we need to get rid of _all_ BUG_ON() cases. If you
> have a "this is major internal corruption, there's no way we can
> continue", then BUG_ON() is appropriate. It will try to kill that
> process and try to keep the machine running, and again, the kind of
> people who don't care about one machine (because - again - they have
> millions of them) can just turn that into a panic-and-reboot
> situation.
> 
> But the kind of people for whom the machine they are on IS THEIR ONLY
> MACHINE - whether it be a workstation, a laptop, or a cellphone -
> there is absolutely zero situation where "let's just kill the machine"
> is *EVER* approproate. Even a BUG_ON() will try to continue as well as
> it can after killing the current thread, but it's going to be iffy,
> because locking etc.
> 
> So WARN_ON_ONCE() is the thing to aim for. BUG_ON() is the thing for
> "oops, I really don't know what to do, and I physically *cannot*
> continue" (and that is *not* "I'm too lazy to do error handling").
> 
> There is no room for PANIC. None. Ever.

Let me clearer what I had in mind, avoiding the PANIC_ON terminology
John raised. I was wondering if it would make sense to

1) Be able to specify a severity for WARN (developer decision)

2) Be able to specify a severity for panic_on_warn (admin decision)

Distributions with kdump could keep a mode whereby severe warnings
(e.g., former BUG_ON) would properly kdump+reboot and harmless warnings
(e.g., clean recovery path) would WARN once + continue.

I agree that whether to panic should in most cases be a decision of the
admin, not the developer.


Now, that's a different discussion then the documentation update at
hand, and I primary wanted to raise awareness for the kdump people, and
ask them if a stronger move towards WARN_ON_ONCE will affect
them/customer expectations.

I'll work with John to document the current rules to reflect everything
you said here.

-- 
Thanks,

David / dhildenb