FAILED: patch "[PATCH] kernel/watchdog: Prevent false positives with turbo modes" failed to apply to 3.18-stable tree

The patch below does not apply to the 3.18-stable tree.
If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to <[email protected]>.

thanks,

greg k-h

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2017 09:50:13 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] kernel/watchdog: Prevent false positives with turbo modes

The hardlockup detector on x86 uses a performance counter based on unhalted CPU cycles and a periodic hrtimer. The hrtimer period is about 2/5 of the performance counter period, so the hrtimer should fire 2-3 times before the performance counter NMI fires. The NMI code checks whether the hrtimer fired since the last invocation. If not, it assumess a hard lockup.

The calculation of those periods is based on the nominal CPU frequency. Turbo modes increase the CPU clock frequency and therefore shorten the period of the perf/NMI watchdog. With extreme Turbo-modes (3x nominal frequency) the perf/NMI period is shorter than the hrtimer period which leads to false positives.

A simple fix would be to shorten the hrtimer period, but that comes with the side effect of more frequent hrtimer and softlockup thread wakeups, which is not desired.

Implement a low pass filter, which checks the perf/NMI period against kernel time. If the perf/NMI fires before 4/5 of the watchdog period has elapsed then the event is ignored and postponed to the next perf/NMI.

That solves the problem and avoids the overhead of shorter hrtimer periods and more frequent softlockup thread wakeups.

index 781521b7cf9e..9101bfc85539 100644
@@ -100,6 +100,7 @@ config X86
 	select GENERIC_STRNCPY_FROM_USER
 	select GENERIC_STRNLEN_USER
 	select GENERIC_TIME_VSYSCALL
+	select HARDLOCKUP_CHECK_TIMESTAMP	if X86_64
 	select HAVE_ACPI_APEI			if ACPI
 	select HAVE_ACPI_APEI_NMI		if ACPI
 	select HAVE_ALIGNED_STRUCT_PAGE		if SLUB

index 8aa01fd859fb..a36abe2da13e 100644
@@ -168,6 +168,14 @@ extern int sysctl_hardlockup_all_cpu_backtrace;
 #define sysctl_softlockup_all_cpu_backtrace 0
 #define sysctl_hardlockup_all_cpu_backtrace 0
 #endif
+
+#if defined(CONFIG_HARDLOCKUP_CHECK_TIMESTAMP) && \
+    defined(CONFIG_HARDLOCKUP_DETECTOR)
+void watchdog_update_hrtimer_threshold(u64 period);
+#else
+static inline void watchdog_update_hrtimer_threshold(u64 period) { }
+#endif
+
 extern bool is_hardlockup(void);
 struct ctl_table;
 extern int proc_watchdog(struct ctl_table *, int ,

index 06d3389bca0d..f5d52024f6b7 100644
@@ -240,6 +240,7 @@ static void set_sample_period(void)
 	 * hardlockup detector generates a warning
 	 */
 	sample_period = get_softlockup_thresh() * ((u64)NSEC_PER_SEC / 5);
+	watchdog_update_hrtimer_threshold(sample_period);
 }
 
 /* Commands for resetting the watchdog */

index 98fe715522e8..c617b9d1d6cb 100644
@@ -797,6 +797,13 @@ config HARDLOCKUP_DETECTOR_PERF
 	bool
 	select SOFTLOCKUP_DETECTOR
 
+#
+# Enables a timestamp based low pass filter to compensate for perf based
+# hard lockup detection which runs too fast due to turbo modes.
+#
+config HARDLOCKUP_CHECK_TIMESTAMP
+	bool
+
 #
 # arch/ can define HAVE_HARDLOCKUP_DETECTOR_ARCH to provide their own hard
 # lockup detector rather than the perf based detector.