rcu: sysctl: Panic on RCU Stall

It is not always easy to determine the cause of an RCU stall just by
analysing the RCU stall messages, mainly when the problem is caused
by the indirect starvation of rcu threads. For example, when preempt_rcu
is not awakened due to the starvation of a timer softirq.

We have been hard coding panic() in the RCU stall functions for
some time while testing the kernel-rt. But this is not possible in
some scenarios, like when supporting customers.

This patch implements the sysctl kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall. If
set to 1, the system will panic() when an RCU stall takes place,
enabling the capture of a vmcore. The vmcore provides a way to analyze
all kernel/tasks states, helping out to point to the culprit and the
solution for the stall.

The kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall sysctl is disabled by default.

Changes from v1:
- Fixed a typo in the git log
- The if(sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall) panic() is in a static function
- Fixed the CONFIG_TINY_RCU compilation issue
- The var sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall is now __read_mostly

Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Lai Jiangshan <jiangshanlai@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@de.ibm.com>
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Reviewed-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@kernel.org>
Tested-by: "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" <lgoncalv@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira <bristot@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
index a3683ce2a2f3..33204604de6c 100644
--- a/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
+++ b/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt
@@ -58,6 +58,7 @@ show up in /proc/sys/kernel:
 - panic_on_stackoverflow
 - panic_on_unrecovered_nmi
 - panic_on_warn
+- panic_on_rcu_stall
 - perf_cpu_time_max_percent
 - perf_event_paranoid
 - perf_event_max_stack
@@ -618,6 +619,17 @@ a kernel rebuild when attempting to kdump at the location of a WARN().
 
 ==============================================================
 
+panic_on_rcu_stall:
+
+When set to 1, calls panic() after RCU stall detection messages. This
+is useful to define the root cause of RCU stalls using a vmcore.
+
+0: do not panic() when RCU stall takes place, default behavior.
+
+1: panic() after printing RCU stall messages.
+
+==============================================================
+
 perf_cpu_time_max_percent:
 
 Hints to the kernel how much CPU time it should be allowed to