Re: [PATCH v3 1/7] dump_stack: Support adding to the dump stack arch description

On (02/08/19 13:55), Steven Rostedt wrote:
[..]

quoted

+	if (len) {
+		/*
+		 * Order the stores above in vsnprintf() vs the store of the
+		 * space below which joins the two strings. Note this doesn't
+		 * make the code truly race free because there is no barrier on
+		 * the read side. ie. Another CPU might load the uninitialised
+		 * tail of the buffer first and then the space below (rather
+		 * than the NULL that was there previously), and so print the
+		 * uninitialised tail. But the whole string lives in BSS so in
+		 * practice it should just see NULLs.
+		 */
+		smp_wmb();

This shows me that this can be called at a time when more than one CPU is
active. What happens if we have two CPUs calling dump_stack_add_arch_desc() at
the same time? Can't that corrupt the dump_stack_arch_desc_str?

Can overwrite part of it, I guess (but it seems that Michael
is OK with this). The string is still NULL terminated.

The worst case scenario I can think of is not the one when
two CPUs call dump_stack_add_arch_desc(), but when CPUA calls
dump_stack_add_arch_desc() to append some data and at the
same time CPUB calls dump_stack_set_arch_desc() and simply
overwrites dump_stack_arch_desc_str. Not sure if this is
critical (or possible).

	-ss