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From: Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenzju@redhat.com>
To: tglx@linutronix.de, mark.rutland@arm.com, paulmck@kernel.org
Cc: rostedt@goodmis.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, rcu@vger.kernel.org,
	peterz@infradead.org, mtosatti@redhat.com, frederic@kernel.org,
	corbet@lwn.net, Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenzju@redhat.com>
Subject: [PATCH v4 2/2] Documentation: core-api: entry: Add comments about nesting
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 11:50:44 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20220110105044.94423-2-nsaenzju@redhat.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20220110105044.94423-1-nsaenzju@redhat.com>

The topic of nesting and reentrancy in the context of early entry code
hasn't been addressed so far. So do it.

Signed-off-by: Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenzju@redhat.com>

---

Changes since v3:
 - Introduce Paul's rewording suggestions

 Documentation/core-api/entry.rst | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 18 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/core-api/entry.rst b/Documentation/core-api/entry.rst
index c6f8e22c88fe..e12f22ab33c7 100644
--- a/Documentation/core-api/entry.rst
+++ b/Documentation/core-api/entry.rst
@@ -105,6 +105,8 @@ has to do extra work between the various steps. In such cases it has to
 ensure that enter_from_user_mode() is called first on entry and
 exit_to_user_mode() is called last on exit.
 
+Do not nest syscalls. Nested systcalls will cause RCU and/or context tracking
+to print a warning.
 
 KVM
 ---
@@ -121,6 +123,8 @@ Task work handling is done separately for guest at the boundary of the
 vcpu_run() loop via xfer_to_guest_mode_handle_work() which is a subset of
 the work handled on return to user space.
 
+Do not nest KVM entry/exit transitions because doing so is nonsensical.
+
 Interrupts and regular exceptions
 ---------------------------------
 
@@ -180,6 +184,16 @@ before it handles soft interrupts, whose handlers must run in BH context rather
 than irq-disabled context. In addition, irqentry_exit() might schedule, which
 also requires that HARDIRQ_OFFSET has been removed from the preemption count.
 
+Even though interrupt handlers are expected to run with local interrupts
+disabled, interrupt nesting is common from an entry/exit perspective. For
+example, softirq handling happens within an irqentry_{enter,exit}() block with
+local interrupts enabled. Also, although uncommon, nothing prevents an
+interrupt handler from re-enabling interrupts.
+
+Interrupt entry/exit code doesn't strictly need to handle reentrancy, since it
+runs with local interrupts disabled. But NMIs can happen anytime, and a lot of
+the entry code is shared between the two.
+
 NMI and NMI-like exceptions
 ---------------------------
 
@@ -259,3 +273,7 @@ and for e.g. a debug exception it can look like this:
 
 There is no combined irqentry_nmi_if_kernel() function available as the
 above cannot be handled in an exception-agnostic way.
+
+NMIs can happen in any context. For example, an NMI-like exception triggered
+while handling an NMI. So NMI entry code has to be reentrant and state updates
+need to handle nesting.
-- 
2.34.1


  reply	other threads:[~2022-01-10 10:51 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-01-10 10:50 [PATCH v4 1/2] Documentation: Fill the gaps about entry/noinstr constraints Nicolas Saenz Julienne
2022-01-10 10:50 ` Nicolas Saenz Julienne [this message]
2022-01-10 18:01   ` [PATCH v4 2/2] Documentation: core-api: entry: Add comments about nesting Paul E. McKenney
2022-01-21 14:55   ` Frederic Weisbecker
2022-01-21 14:47 ` [PATCH v4 1/2] Documentation: Fill the gaps about entry/noinstr constraints Frederic Weisbecker
2022-01-27 18:33 ` Jonathan Corbet

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