• Russ Anderson's avatar
    [IA64] MCA recovery: kernel context recovery table · d2a28ad9
    Russ Anderson authored
    Memory errors encountered by user applications may surface
    when the CPU is running in kernel context.  The current code
    will not attempt recovery if the MCA surfaces in kernel
    context (privilage mode 0).  This patch adds a check for cases
    where the user initiated the load that surfaces in kernel
    interrupt code.
    
    An example is a user process lauching a load from memory
    and the data in memory had bad ECC.  Before the bad data
    gets to the CPU register, and interrupt comes in.  The
    code jumps to the IVT interrupt entry point and begins
    execution in kernel context.  The process of saving the
    user registers (SAVE_REST) causes the bad data to be loaded
    into a CPU register, triggering the MCA.  The MCA surfaces in
    kernel context, even though the load was initiated from
    user context.
    
    As suggested by David and Tony, this patch uses an exception
    table like approach, puting the tagged recovery addresses in
    a searchable table.  One difference from the exception table
    is that MCAs do not surface in precise places (such as with
    a TLB miss), so instead of tagging specific instructions,
    address ranges are registers.  A single macro is used to do
    the tagging, with the input parameter being the label
    of the starting address and the macro being the ending
    address.  This limits clutter in the code.
    
    This patch only tags one spot, the interrupt ivt entry.
    Testing showed that spot to be a "heavy hitter" with
    MCAs surfacing while saving user registers.  Other spots
    can be added as needed by adding a single macro.
    
    Signed-off-by: Russ Anderson (rja@sgi.com)
    Signed-off-by: default avatarTony Luck <tony.luck@intel.com>
    d2a28ad9
vmlinux.lds.S 6.59 KB