[PATCH] arm: versatile: don't mark pen as __INIT

[Stephen Boyd]

On 06/10/13 12:09, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> On 06/10/13 11:52, Mark Rutland wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 07:39:27PM +0100, Stephen Boyd wrote:
>>> On 06/10/13 08:07, Mark Rutland wrote:
>>>> When booting fewer cores than are physically present on a versatile
>>>> platform (e.g. when passing maxcpus=N on the command line), some
>>>> secondary cores may remain in the holding pen, which is marked __INIT.
>>>> Late in the boot process, the memory comprising the holding pen will be
>>>> released to the kernel for more general use, and may be overwritten with
>>>> arbitrary data, which can cause the held secondaries to start behaving
>>>> unpredictably. This can lead to all manner of odd behaviour from the
>>>> kernel.
>>>>
>>>> Instead don't mark the section as __INIT. This means we can't reuse the
>>>> pen memory, but we won't get secondaries corrupting the rest of the
>>>> kernel.
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland at arm.com>
>>>> Acked-by: Pawel Moll <pawel.moll at arm.com>
>>>> Cc: Lorenzo Pieralisi <lorenzo.pieralisi at arm.com>
>>>> ---
>>>>  arch/arm/plat-versatile/headsmp.S | 2 --
>>>>  1 file changed, 2 deletions(-)
>>>>
>>>> diff --git a/arch/arm/plat-versatile/headsmp.S b/arch/arm/plat-versatile/headsmp.S
>>>> index b178d44..2677bc3 100644
>>>> --- a/arch/arm/plat-versatile/headsmp.S
>>>> +++ b/arch/arm/plat-versatile/headsmp.S
>>>> @@ -11,8 +11,6 @@
>>>>  #include <linux/linkage.h>
>>>>  #include <linux/init.h>
>>>>  
>>>> -	__INIT
>>>> -
>>>>  /*
>>>>   * Realview/Versatile Express specific entry point for secondary CPUs.
>>>>   * This provides a "holding pen" into which all secondary cores are held
>>> Why doesn't __CPUINIT work?
>> Won't we then encounter the same problem on builds without CPU_HOTPLUG? I
>> thought we'd throw away the .cpuinit.* section(s) in that case?
>>
> The generic linker macros look to set it up so that all __CPUINIT
> sections become __INIT in that scenario. Since we don't support hotplug
> booting with maxcpus < nr_present_cpus can't lead to any corruption
> because we can't bring online any of the offline and present CPUs.
>

Sorry I should clarify further. We can't bring online any offline and
present CPUs after the init sections are freed.

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