When the clocksource watchdog marks a clock as unstable, this might be due
to that clock being unstable or it might be due to delays that happen to
occur between the reads of the two clocks. Yes, interrupts are disabled
across those two reads, but there are no shortage of things that can delay
interrupts-disabled regions of code ranging from SMI handlers to vCPU
preemption. It would be good to have some indication as to why the clock
was marked unstable.
Therefore, re-read the watchdog clock on either side of the read from the
clock under test. If the watchdog clock shows an excessive time delta
between its pair of reads, the reads are retried.
The maximum number of retries is specified by a new kernel boot parameter
clocksource.max_cswd_read_retries, which defaults to three, that is, up to
four reads, one initial and up to three retries. If more than one retry
was required, a message is printed on the console (the occasional single
retry is expected behavior, especially in guest OSes). If the maximum
number of retries is exceeded, the clock under test will be marked
unstable. However, the probability of this happening due to various sorts
of delays is quite small. In addition, the reason (clock-read delays) for
the unstable marking will be apparent.
Reported-by: Chris Mason <clm@fb.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Acked-by: Feng Tang <feng.tang@intel.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210527190124.440372-1-paulmck@kernel.org
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