[PATCH] arm64: Fix garbled logs caused by race between multiple stack traces

David Sauerwein dssauerw at amazon.de
Thu Apr 30 01:47:38 PDT 2026


When multiple stack traces are printed at the same time, the lines that
contain register values may get split into multiple separate lines.
Some stray empty lines may appear as well.

[ 2013.814455] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 2013.814455] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 2013.814459] WARNING: CPU: 12 PID: 626 at src/arch/arm64/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:3860 mark_page_dirty_in_slot+0x5c/0xd8
[ 2013.814457] WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 620 at src/arch/arm64/kvm/../../../virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:3860 mark_page_dirty_in_slot+0x5c/0xd8
[...]
[ 2013.814483] x29: ffff8000873b3b10
[ 2013.814484] x29: ffff800083fd3b10
[ 2013.814484]  x28: ffff00001d71e300 x27: 0000000000000001
[ 2013.814486] x26: ffff800080c63b80 x25: ffff800080c63000
[ 2013.814487]  x28: ffff00001d71a100 x27: 0000000000000001
[ 2013.814488]  x24: 0000000000401b14
[ 2013.814489]
[ 2013.814489] x26: ffff800080f5bb80 x25: ffff800080f5b000
[ 2013.814491]
[ 2013.814491] x23: ffff0000117b2000 x22: ffff00001e22bd88 x21: 0000ff9cc1b14000
[ 2013.814493]  x24: 0000000000402230
[ 2013.814494]
[ 2013.814495] x20: ffff800080c63000
[ 2013.814495] x23: ffff00001d916f00
[ 2013.814496]  x19: 0000000000000000 x18: ffff8000808c1660
[ 2013.814497] x17: 0000000000000000
[...]

(Example observed on v6.6 based kernel)

This happens because __show_regs uses pr_cont. The two threads printing
the traces race when printing partial register lines.

While the lines of the stack traces may still interleave, the individual
lines printing up to 3 register values should not be split. To fix this,
buffer the output and print all registers in a single printk instead of
using pr_cont.

Assisted-by: Kiro:claude-opus-4.6
Signed-off-by: David Sauerwein <dssauerw at amazon.de>
---
 arch/arm64/kernel/process.c | 16 +++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c
index 033643cd4e5ed..27779539e3b4f 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/process.c
@@ -235,12 +235,22 @@ void __show_regs(struct pt_regs *regs)
 	i = top_reg;
 
 	while (i >= 0) {
-		printk("x%-2d: %016llx", i, regs->regs[i]);
+		/*
+		 * Buffer is big enough to hold the output for 3 register
+		 * plus some extra.
+		 */
+		char buf[80];
+		int len;
+
+		len = scnprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "x%-2d: %016llx",
+				i, regs->regs[i]);
 
 		while (i-- % 3)
-			pr_cont(" x%-2d: %016llx", i, regs->regs[i]);
+			len += scnprintf(buf + len, sizeof(buf) - len,
+					 " x%-2d: %016llx",
+					 i, regs->regs[i]);
 
-		pr_cont("\n");
+		printk("%s\n", buf);
 	}
 }
 
-- 
2.47.3




Amazon Web Services Development Center Germany GmbH
Tamara-Danz-Str. 13
10243 Berlin
Geschaeftsfuehrung: Christof Hellmis, Andreas Stieger
Eingetragen am Amtsgericht Charlottenburg unter HRB 257764 B
Sitz: Berlin
Ust-ID: DE 365 538 597




More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list