linux.git/kernel/time/clocksource.c, branch v6.6.131

clocksource: Fix the CPUs' choice in the watchdog per CPU verification

2025-06-27T10:08:51+00:00

[ Upstream commit 08d7becc1a6b8c936e25d827becabfe3bff72a36 ]

Right now, if the clocksource watchdog detects a clocksource skew, it might
perform a per CPU check, for example in the TSC case on x86.  In other
words: supposing TSC is detected as unstable by the clocksource watchdog
running at CPU1, as part of marking TSC unstable the kernel will also run a
check of TSC readings on some CPUs to be sure it is synced between them
all.

But that check happens only on some CPUs, not all of them; this choice is
based on the parameter "verify_n_cpus" and in some random cpumask
calculation. So, the watchdog runs such per CPU checks on up to
"verify_n_cpus" random CPUs among all online CPUs, with the risk of
repeating CPUs (that aren't double checked) in the cpumask random
calculation.

But if "verify_n_cpus" > num_online_cpus(), it should skip the random
calculation and just go ahead and check the clocksource sync between
all online CPUs, without the risk of skipping some CPUs due to
duplicity in the random cpumask calculation.

Tests in a 4 CPU laptop with TSC skew detected led to some cases of the per
CPU verification skipping some CPU even with verify_n_cpus=8, due to the
duplicity on random cpumask generation. Skipping the randomization when the
number of online CPUs is smaller than verify_n_cpus, solves that.

Suggested-by: Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo 
Signed-off-by: Guilherme G. Piccoli 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250323173857.372390-1-gpiccoli@igalia.com
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Use migrate_disable() to avoid calling get_random_u32() in atomic context

2025-02-21T12:57:20+00:00

[ Upstream commit 6bb05a33337b2c842373857b63de5c9bf1ae2a09 ]

The following bug report happened with a PREEMPT_RT kernel:

  BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/spinlock_rt.c:48
  in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 2012, name: kwatchdog
  preempt_count: 1, expected: 0
  RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0
  get_random_u32+0x4f/0x110
  clocksource_verify_choose_cpus+0xab/0x1a0
  clocksource_verify_percpu.part.0+0x6b/0x330
  clocksource_watchdog_kthread+0x193/0x1a0

It is due to the fact that clocksource_verify_choose_cpus() is invoked with
preemption disabled.  This function invokes get_random_u32() to obtain
random numbers for choosing CPUs.  The batched_entropy_32 local lock and/or
the base_crng.lock spinlock in driver/char/random.c will be acquired during
the call. In PREEMPT_RT kernel, they are both sleeping locks and so cannot
be acquired in atomic context.

Fix this problem by using migrate_disable() to allow smp_processor_id() to
be reliably used without introducing atomic context. preempt_disable() is
then called after clocksource_verify_choose_cpus() but before the
clocksource measurement is being run to avoid introducing unexpected
latency.

Fixes: 7560c02bdffb ("clocksource: Check per-CPU clock synchronization when marked unstable")
Suggested-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior 
Signed-off-by: Waiman Long 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Reviewed-by: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250131173323.891943-2-longman@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Use pr_info() for "Checking clocksource synchronization" message

2025-02-21T12:57:19+00:00

[ Upstream commit 1f566840a82982141f94086061927a90e79440e5 ]

The "Checking clocksource synchronization" message is normally printed
when clocksource_verify_percpu() is called for a given clocksource if
both the CLOCK_SOURCE_UNSTABLE and CLOCK_SOURCE_VERIFY_PERCPU flags
are set.

It is an informational message and so pr_info() is the correct choice.

Signed-off-by: Waiman Long 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Acked-by: John Stultz 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250125015442.3740588-1-longman@redhat.com
Stable-dep-of: 6bb05a33337b ("clocksource: Use migrate_disable() to avoid calling get_random_u32() in atomic context")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Make watchdog and suspend-timing multiplication overflow safe

2024-08-29T15:33:39+00:00

[ Upstream commit d0304569fb019d1bcfbbbce1ce6df6b96f04079b ]

Kernel timekeeping is designed to keep the change in cycles (since the last
timer interrupt) below max_cycles, which prevents multiplication overflow
when converting cycles to nanoseconds. However, if timer interrupts stop,
the clocksource_cyc2ns() calculation will eventually overflow.

Add protection against that. Simplify by folding together
clocksource_delta() and clocksource_cyc2ns() into cycles_to_nsec_safe().
Check against max_cycles, falling back to a slower higher precision
calculation.

Suggested-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Signed-off-by: Adrian Hunter 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240325064023.2997-20-adrian.hunter@intel.com
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Fix brown-bag boolean thinko in cs_watchdog_read()

2024-08-14T11:58:56+00:00

[ Upstream commit f2655ac2c06a15558e51ed6529de280e1553c86e ]

The current "nretries > 1 || nretries >= max_retries" check in
cs_watchdog_read() will always evaluate to true, and thus pr_warn(), if
nretries is greater than 1.  The intent is instead to never warn on the
first try, but otherwise warn if the successful retry was the last retry.

Therefore, change that "||" to "&&".

Fixes: db3a34e17433 ("clocksource: Retry clock read if long delays detected")
Reported-by: Borislav Petkov 
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20240802154618.4149953-2-paulmck@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Scale the watchdog read retries automatically

2024-08-14T11:58:56+00:00

[ Upstream commit 2ed08e4bc53298db3f87b528cd804cb0cce066a9 ]

On a 8-socket server the TSC is wrongly marked as 'unstable' and disabled
during boot time on about one out of 120 boot attempts:

clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU227: wd-tsc-wd excessive read-back delay of 153560ns vs. limit of 125000ns,
wd-wd read-back delay only 11440ns, attempt 3, marking tsc unstable
tsc: Marking TSC unstable due to clocksource watchdog
TSC found unstable after boot, most likely due to broken BIOS. Use 'tsc=unstable'.
sched_clock: Marking unstable (119294969739, 159204297)<-(125446229205, -5992055152)
clocksource: Checking clocksource tsc synchronization from CPU 319 to CPUs 0,99,136,180,210,542,601,896.
clocksource: Switched to clocksource hpet

The reason is that for platform with a large number of CPUs, there are
sporadic big or huge read latencies while reading the watchog/clocksource
during boot or when system is under stress work load, and the frequency and
maximum value of the latency goes up with the number of online CPUs.

The cCurrent code already has logic to detect and filter such high latency
case by reading the watchdog twice and checking the two deltas. Due to the
randomness of the latency, there is a low probabilty that the first delta
(latency) is big, but the second delta is small and looks valid. The
watchdog code retries the readouts by default twice, which is not
necessarily sufficient for systems with a large number of CPUs.

There is a command line parameter 'max_cswd_read_retries' which allows to
increase the number of retries, but that's not user friendly as it needs to
be tweaked per system. As the number of required retries is proportional to
the number of online CPUs, this parameter can be calculated at runtime.

Scale and enlarge the number of retries according to the number of online
CPUs and remove the command line parameter completely.

[ tglx: Massaged change log and comments ]

Signed-off-by: Feng Tang
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner
Tested-by: Jin Wang
Tested-by: Paul E. McKenney
Reviewed-by: Waiman Long
Reviewed-by: Paul E. McKenney
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240221060859.1027450-1-feng.tang@intel.com
Stable-dep-of: f2655ac2c06a ("clocksource: Fix brown-bag boolean thinko in cs_watchdog_read()")
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin

clocksource: Skip watchdog check for large watchdog intervals

2024-02-01T00:19:13+00:00

commit 644649553508b9bacf0fc7a5bdc4f9e0165576a5 upstream.

There have been reports of the watchdog marking clocksources unstable on
machines with 8 NUMA nodes:

  clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU373:
  Marking clocksource 'tsc' as unstable because the skew is too large:
  clocksource:   'hpet' wd_nsec: 14523447520
  clocksource:   'tsc'  cs_nsec: 14524115132

The measured clocksource skew - the absolute difference between cs_nsec
and wd_nsec - was 668 microseconds:

  cs_nsec - wd_nsec = 14524115132 - 14523447520 = 667612

The kernel used 200 microseconds for the uncertainty_margin of both the
clocksource and watchdog, resulting in a threshold of 400 microseconds (the
md variable). Both the cs_nsec and the wd_nsec value indicate that the
readout interval was circa 14.5 seconds.  The observed behaviour is that
watchdog checks failed for large readout intervals on 8 NUMA node
machines. This indicates that the size of the skew was directly proportinal
to the length of the readout interval on those machines. The measured
clocksource skew, 668 microseconds, was evaluated against a threshold (the
md variable) that is suited for readout intervals of roughly
WATCHDOG_INTERVAL, i.e. HZ >> 1, which is 0.5 second.

The intention of 2e27e793e280 ("clocksource: Reduce clocksource-skew
threshold") was to tighten the threshold for evaluating skew and set the
lower bound for the uncertainty_margin of clocksources to twice
WATCHDOG_MAX_SKEW. Later in c37e85c135ce ("clocksource: Loosen clocksource
watchdog constraints"), the WATCHDOG_MAX_SKEW constant was increased to
125 microseconds to fit the limit of NTP, which is able to use a
clocksource that suffers from up to 500 microseconds of skew per second.
Both the TSC and the HPET use default uncertainty_margin. When the
readout interval gets stretched the default uncertainty_margin is no
longer a suitable lower bound for evaluating skew - it imposes a limit
that is far stricter than the skew with which NTP can deal.

The root causes of the skew being directly proportinal to the length of
the readout interval are:

  * the inaccuracy of the shift/mult pairs of clocksources and the watchdog
  * the conversion to nanoseconds is imprecise for large readout intervals

Prevent this by skipping the current watchdog check if the readout
interval exceeds 2 * WATCHDOG_INTERVAL. Considering the maximum readout
interval of 2 * WATCHDOG_INTERVAL, the current default uncertainty margin
(of the TSC and HPET) corresponds to a limit on clocksource skew of 250
ppm (microseconds of skew per second).  To keep the limit imposed by NTP
(500 microseconds of skew per second) for all possible readout intervals,
the margins would have to be scaled so that the threshold value is
proportional to the length of the actual readout interval.

As for why the readout interval may get stretched: Since the watchdog is
executed in softirq context the expiration of the watchdog timer can get
severely delayed on account of a ksoftirqd thread not getting to run in a
timely manner. Surely, a system with such belated softirq execution is not
working well and the scheduling issue should be looked into but the
clocksource watchdog should be able to deal with it accordingly.

Fixes: 2e27e793e280 ("clocksource: Reduce clocksource-skew threshold")
Suggested-by: Feng Tang 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Wiesner 
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner 
Tested-by: Paul E. McKenney 
Reviewed-by: Feng Tang 
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240122172350.GA740@incl
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

clocksource: Handle negative skews in "skew is too large" messages

2023-07-14T22:17:09+00:00

The nanosecond-to-millisecond skew computation uses unsigned arithmetic,
which produces user-unfriendly large positive numbers for negative skews.
Therefore, use signed arithmetic for this computation in order to preserve
the negativity.

Reported-by: Chris Bainbridge 
Reported-by: Feng Tang 
Fixes: dd029269947a ("clocksource: Improve "skew is too large" messages")
Reviewed-by: Feng Tang 
Tested-by: Chris Bainbridge 
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney

clocksource: Replace all non-returning strlcpy with strscpy

2023-06-01T18:24:50+00:00

strlcpy() reads the entire source buffer first.
This read may exceed the destination size limit.
This is both inefficient and can lead to linear read
overflows if a source string is not NUL-terminated [1].
In an effort to remove strlcpy() completely [2], replace
strlcpy() here with strscpy().
No return values were used, so direct replacement is safe.

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/deprecated.html#strlcpy
[2] https://github.com/KSPP/linux/issues/89

Signed-off-by: Azeem Shaikh 
Acked-by: John Stultz 
Signed-off-by: Kees Cook 
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230530163546.986188-1-azeemshaikh38@gmail.com

clocksource: Suspend the watchdog temporarily when high read latency detected

2023-01-24T23:12:48+00:00

Bugs have been reported on 8 sockets x86 machines in which the TSC was
wrongly disabled when the system is under heavy workload.

 [ 818.380354] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU336: hpet wd-wd read-back delay of 1203520ns
 [ 818.436160] clocksource: wd-tsc-wd read-back delay of 181880ns, clock-skew test skipped!
 [ 819.402962] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU338: hpet wd-wd read-back delay of 324000ns
 [ 819.448036] clocksource: wd-tsc-wd read-back delay of 337240ns, clock-skew test skipped!
 [ 819.880863] clocksource: timekeeping watchdog on CPU339: hpet read-back delay of 150280ns, attempt 3, marking unstable
 [ 819.936243] tsc: Marking TSC unstable due to clocksource watchdog
 [ 820.068173] TSC found unstable after boot, most likely due to broken BIOS. Use 'tsc=unstable'.
 [ 820.092382] sched_clock: Marking unstable (818769414384, 1195404998)
 [ 820.643627] clocksource: Checking clocksource tsc synchronization from CPU 267 to CPUs 0,4,25,70,126,430,557,564.
 [ 821.067990] clocksource: Switched to clocksource hpet

This can be reproduced by running memory intensive 'stream' tests,
or some of the stress-ng subcases such as 'ioport'.

The reason for these issues is the when system is under heavy load, the
read latency of the clocksources can be very high.  Even lightweight TSC
reads can show high latencies, and latencies are much worse for external
clocksources such as HPET or the APIC PM timer.  These latencies can
result in false-positive clocksource-unstable determinations.

These issues were initially reported by a customer running on a production
system, and this problem was reproduced on several generations of Xeon
servers, especially when running the stress-ng test.  These Xeon servers
were not production systems, but they did have the latest steppings
and firmware.

Given that the clocksource watchdog is a continual diagnostic check with
frequency of twice a second, there is no need to rush it when the system
is under heavy load.  Therefore, when high clocksource read latencies
are detected, suspend the watchdog timer for 5 minutes.

Signed-off-by: Feng Tang 
Acked-by: Waiman Long 
Cc: John Stultz 
Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: Stephen Boyd 
Cc: Feng Tang 
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney