[PATCH 0/4] kdump: crashkernel reservation from CMA

[Philipp Rudo]

On Wed, 6 Dec 2023 16:19:51 +0100
Michal Hocko <mhocko at suse.com> wrote:

> On Wed 06-12-23 14:49:51, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > On Wed 06-12-23 12:08:05, Philipp Rudo wrote:  
> [...]
> > > If I understand Documentation/core-api/pin_user_pages.rst correctly you
> > > missed case 1 Direct IO. In that case "short term" DMA is allowed for
> > > pages without FOLL_LONGTERM. Meaning that there is a way you can
> > > corrupt the CMA and with that the crash kernel after the production
> > > kernel has panicked.  
> > 
> > Could you expand on this? How exactly direct IO request survives across
> > into the kdump kernel? I do understand the RMDA case because the IO is
> > async and out of control of the receiving end.  
> 
> OK, I guess I get what you mean. You are worried that there is 
> DIO request
> program DMA controller to read into CMA memory
> <panic>
> boot into crash kernel backed by CMA
> DMA transfer is done.
> 
> DIO doesn't migrate the pinned memory because it is considered a very
> quick operation which doesn't block the movability for too long. That is
> why I have considered that a non-problem. RDMA on the other might pin
> memory for transfer for much longer but that case is handled by
> migrating the memory away.

Right that is the scenario we need to prevent.

> Now I agree that there is a chance of the corruption from DIO. The
> question I am not entirely clear about right now is how big of a real
> problem that is. DMA transfers should be a very swift operation. Would
> it help to wait for a grace period before jumping into the kdump kernel?

Please see my other mail.

> > Also if direct IO is a problem how come this is not a problem for kexec
> > in general. The new kernel usually shares all the memory with the 1st
> > kernel.  
> 
> This is also more clear now. Pure kexec is shutting down all the devices
> which should terminate the in-flight DMA transfers.

Right, it _should_ terminate all transfers. But here we are back at the
shitty device drivers that don't have a working shutdown method. That's
why we have already seen the problem you describe above with kexec. And
please believe me that debugging such a scenario is an absolute pain.
Especially when it's a proprietary, out-of-tree driver that caused the
mess.

Thanks
Philipp