linux-toradex.git/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt, branch v4.10-rc7

Merge tag 'docs-4.10' of git://git.lwn.net/linux

2016-12-13T05:58:13+00:00

Pull documentation update from Jonathan Corbet:
 "These are the documentation changes for 4.10.

  It's another busy cycle for the docs tree, as the sphinx conversion
  continues. Highlights include:

   - Further work on PDF output, which remains a bit of a pain but
     should be more solid now.

   - Five more DocBook template files converted to Sphinx. Only 27 to
     go... Lots of plain-text files have also been converted and
     integrated.

   - Images in binary formats have been replaced with more
     source-friendly versions.

   - Various bits of organizational work, including the renaming of
     various files discussed at the kernel summit.

   - New documentation for the device_link mechanism.

  ... and, of course, lots of typo fixes and small updates"

* tag 'docs-4.10' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (193 commits)
  dma-buf: Extract dma-buf.rst
  Update Documentation/00-INDEX
  docs: 00-INDEX: document directories/files with no docs
  docs: 00-INDEX: remove non-existing entries
  docs: 00-INDEX: add missing entries for documentation files/dirs
  docs: 00-INDEX: consolidate process/ and admin-guide/ description
  scripts: add a script to check if Documentation/00-INDEX is sane
  Docs: change sh -> awk in REPORTING-BUGS
  Documentation/core-api/device_link: Add initial documentation
  core-api: remove an unexpected unident
  ppc/idle: Add documentation for powersave=off
  Doc: Correct typo, "Introdution" => "Introduction"
  Documentation/atomic_ops.txt: convert to ReST markup
  Documentation/local_ops.txt: convert to ReST markup
  Documentation/assoc_array.txt: convert to ReST markup
  docs-rst: parse-headers.pl: cleanup the documentation
  docs-rst: fix media cleandocs target
  docs-rst: media/Makefile: reorganize the rules
  docs-rst: media: build SVG from graphviz files
  docs-rst: replace bayer.png by a SVG image
  ...

x86/dumpstack: Remove raw stack dump

2016-10-25T16:40:37+00:00

For mostly historical reasons, the x86 oops dump shows the raw stack
values:

  ...
  [registers]
  Stack:
   ffff880079af7350 ffff880079905400 0000000000000000 ffffc900008f3ae0
   ffffffffa0196610 0000000000000001 00010000ffffffff 0000000087654321
   0000000000000002 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000
  Call Trace:
  ...

This seems to be an artifact from long ago, and probably isn't needed
anymore.  It generally just adds noise to the dump, and it can be
actively harmful because it leaks kernel addresses.

Linus says:

  "The stack dump actually goes back to forever, and it used to be
   useful back in 1992 or so. But it used to be useful mainly because
   stacks were simpler and we didn't have very good call traces anyway. I
   definitely remember having used them - I just do not remember having
   used them in the last ten+ years.

   Of course, it's still true that if you can trigger an oops, you've
   likely already lost the security game, but since the stack dump is so
   useless, let's aim to just remove it and make games like the above
   harder."

This also removes the related 'kstack=' cmdline option and the
'kstack_depth_to_print' sysctl.

Suggested-by: Linus Torvalds 
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Cc: Andy Lutomirski 
Cc: Borislav Petkov 
Cc: Brian Gerst 
Cc: Denys Vlasenko 
Cc: H. Peter Anvin 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/e83bd50df52d8fe88e94d2566426ae40d813bf8f.1477405374.git.jpoimboe@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

docs: fix locations of several documents that got moved

2016-10-24T10:12:35+00:00

The previous patch renamed several files that are cross-referenced
along the Kernel documentation. Adjust the links to point to
the right places.

Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab

printk: add kernel parameter to control writes to /dev/kmsg

2016-08-02T23:35:06+00:00

Add a "printk.devkmsg" kernel command line parameter which controls how
userspace writes into /dev/kmsg.  It has three options:

 * ratelimit - ratelimit logging from userspace.
 * on  - unlimited logging from userspace
 * off - logging from userspace gets ignored

The default setting is to ratelimit the messages written to it.

This changes the kernel default setting of "on" to "ratelimit" and we do
that because we want to keep userspace spamming /dev/kmsg to sane
levels.  This is especially moot when a small kernel log buffer wraps
around and messages get lost.  So the ratelimiting setting should be a
sane setting where kernel messages should have a bit higher chance of
survival from all the spamming.

It additionally does not limit logging to /dev/kmsg while the system is
booting if we haven't disabled it on the command line.

Furthermore, we can control the logging from a lower priority sysctl
interface - kernel.printk_devkmsg.

That interface will succeed only if printk.devkmsg *hasn't* been
supplied on the command line.  If it has, then printk.devkmsg is a
one-time setting which remains for the duration of the system lifetime.
This "locking" of the setting is to prevent userspace from changing the
logging on us through sysctl(2).

This patch is based on previous patches from Linus and Steven.

[bp@suse.de: fixes]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160719072344.GC25563@nazgul.tnic
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160716061745.15795-3-bp@alien8.de
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov 
Cc: Dave Young 
Cc: Franck Bui 
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman 
Cc: Ingo Molnar 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Steven Rostedt 
Cc: Uwe Kleine-König 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

rcu: sysctl: Panic on RCU Stall

2016-06-15T23:00:05+00:00

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 
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" 
Cc: Josh Triplett 
Cc: Steven Rostedt 
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers 
Cc: Lai Jiangshan 
Acked-by: Christian Borntraeger 
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett 
Reviewed-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo 
Tested-by: "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" 
Signed-off-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira 
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney

perf core: Separate accounting of contexts and real addresses in a stack trace

2016-05-17T02:11:53+00:00

The perf_sample->ip_callchain->nr value includes all the entries in the
ip_callchain->ip[] array, real addresses and PERF_CONTEXT_{KERNEL,USER,etc},
while what the user expects is that what is in the kernel.perf_event_max_stack
sysctl or in the upcoming per event perf_event_attr.sample_max_stack knob be
honoured in terms of IP addresses in the stack trace.

So allocate a bunch of extra entries for contexts, and do the accounting
via perf_callchain_entry_ctx struct members.

A new sysctl, kernel.perf_event_max_contexts_per_stack is also
introduced for investigating possible bugs in the callchain
implementation by some arch.

Cc: Adrian Hunter 
Cc: Alexander Shishkin 
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov 
Cc: Brendan Gregg 
Cc: David Ahern 
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker 
Cc: He Kuang 
Cc: Jiri Olsa 
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu 
Cc: Milian Wolff 
Cc: Namhyung Kim 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Stephane Eranian 
Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: Vince Weaver 
Cc: Wang Nan 
Cc: Zefan Li 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/n/tip-3b4wnqk340c4sg4gwkfdi9yk@git.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo

Merge branch 'perf/urgent' into perf/core, to pick up fixes

2016-05-11T14:56:38+00:00

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

perf/core: Change the default paranoia level to 2

2016-05-10T00:57:12+00:00

Allowing unprivileged kernel profiling lets any user dump follow kernel
control flow and dump kernel registers.  This most likely allows trivial
kASLR bypassing, and it may allow other mischief as well.  (Off the top
of my head, the PERF_SAMPLE_REGS_INTR output during /dev/urandom reads
could be quite interesting.)

Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski 
Acked-by: Kees Cook 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

perf core: Allow setting up max frame stack depth via sysctl

2016-04-27T13:20:39+00:00

The default remains 127, which is good for most cases, and not even hit
most of the time, but then for some cases, as reported by Brendan, 1024+
deep frames are appearing on the radar for things like groovy, ruby.

And in some workloads putting a _lower_ cap on this may make sense. One
that is per event still needs to be put in place tho.

The new file is:

  # cat /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_max_stack
  127

Chaging it:

  # echo 256 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_max_stack
  # cat /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_max_stack
  256

But as soon as there is some event using callchains we get:

  # echo 512 > /proc/sys/kernel/perf_event_max_stack
  -bash: echo: write error: Device or resource busy
  #

Because we only allocate the callchain percpu data structures when there
is a user, which allows for changing the max easily, its just a matter
of having no callchain users at that point.

Reported-and-Tested-by: Brendan Gregg 
Reviewed-by: Frederic Weisbecker 
Acked-by: Alexei Starovoitov 
Acked-by: David Ahern 
Cc: Adrian Hunter 
Cc: Alexander Shishkin 
Cc: He Kuang 
Cc: Jiri Olsa 
Cc: Linus Torvalds 
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu 
Cc: Milian Wolff 
Cc: Namhyung Kim 
Cc: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: Stephane Eranian 
Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: Vince Weaver 
Cc: Wang Nan 
Cc: Zefan Li 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160426002928.GB16708@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo

Merge tag 'tty-4.6-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/tty

2016-03-17T20:53:25+00:00

Pull tty/serial updates from Greg KH:
 "Here's the big tty/serial driver pull request for 4.6-rc1.

  Lots of changes in here, Peter has been on a tear again, with lots of
  refactoring and bugs fixes, many thanks to the great work he has been
  doing.  Lots of driver updates and fixes as well, full details in the
  shortlog.

  All have been in linux-next for a while with no reported issues"

* tag 'tty-4.6-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/tty: (220 commits)
  serial: 8250: describe CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RSA
  serial: samsung: optimize UART rx fifo access routine
  serial: pl011: add mark/space parity support
  serial: sa1100: make sa1100_register_uart_fns a function
  tty: serial: 8250: add MOXA Smartio MUE boards support
  serial: 8250: convert drivers to use up_to_u8250p()
  serial: 8250/mediatek: fix building with SERIAL_8250=m
  serial: 8250/ingenic: fix building with SERIAL_8250=m
  serial: 8250/uniphier: fix modular build
  Revert "drivers/tty/serial: make 8250/8250_ingenic.c explicitly non-modular"
  Revert "drivers/tty/serial: make 8250/8250_mtk.c explicitly non-modular"
  serial: mvebu-uart: initial support for Armada-3700 serial port
  serial: mctrl_gpio: Add missing module license
  serial: ifx6x60: avoid uninitialized variable use
  tty/serial: at91: fix bad offset for UART timeout register
  tty/serial: at91: restore dynamic driver binding
  serial: 8250: Add hardware dependency to RT288X option
  TTY, devpts: document pty count limiting
  tty: goldfish: support platform_device with id -1
  drivers: tty: goldfish: Add device tree bindings
  ...