[PATCH net-next v3 0/5] netconsole: Support messages ratelimit-ing
From: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Date: 2026-09-14 12:10:37
Also in:
linux-doc, linux-kselftest, lkml
netconsole hands every console message to every enabled target, with no bound on the rate. At Meta, a few hosts caused some DoS and netconsd was OOM killed in some regions, fed by 3 billion RCU messages from thousand hosts and by a swap fault that retries forever, which logged 6 million copies of one line on a single host in a few hours. Both floods are being fixed where they are printed, by Paul and me for RCU Tasks [1][2] and by me for the swap fault fix [3], but that only ever covers the flood already found, not new issues that might be happening. Use the ratelimit in the kernel to ratelimit messages from netconsole. Give each target a token bucket, consulted once per message so that a message split into several ncfrag packets is sent whole or dropped whole. It starts with a zero interval, which struct ratelimit_state treats as unlimited, so nothing changes until ratelimit_interval_ms and ratelimit_burst are written. What the bucket discards leaves nothing on the wire. An extended target sees the loss as a gap in the sequence number the header carries: 7.2.0-rc7-01460-g75848acaf136,13,628,252392647,-;netconsole selftest: netcons_AGujw 1 7.2.0-rc7-01460-g75848acaf136,13,629,252392782,-;netconsole selftest: netcons_AGujw 2 7.2.0-rc7-01460-g75848acaf136,13,678,254742125,-;netconsole selftest: netcons_AGujw 1 Crash output is exempt. The bucket is skipped once netconsole_kernel_dying() is true, which the first patch adds: oops_in_progress covers panic(), TAINT_DIE covers an oops or a BUG(), whose records only reach netconsole from the printer thread, after oops_end() cleared the flag. A target that has seen the kernel die stays unlimited until reboot. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/anw8Qw8lfeIykski@gmail.com/ (local) [2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260810-rcu_task_shrink_lruvec-v1-1-4d9f7d5251cb@debian.org/ (local) [3] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260813-swap-v2-0-4a625ccabdae@debian.org/ (local) Signed-off-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org> --- Changes in v3: - New first patch, a fix that stands on its own: oops_only=1 receives nothing on an oops today, because the backtrace reaches netconsole from the printer thread, after oops_end() cleared oops_in_progress. It tests TAINT_DIE too, behind netconsole_kernel_dying(), which the bucket then reuses so that a limit cannot truncate a crash either. (Sashiko) - Restart the interval when either knob is written. A target is configured while it floods, with the bucket already empty, and the new limit only applied one interval later. (Sashiko) - Reject an interval above INT_MAX ms. msecs_to_jiffies() saturates below INT_MAX on 32-bit, so checking the jiffies value alone took a write there that a 64-bit kernel turns down. (Sashiko) - List both files in the target parameter table, and qualify the rule underneath it, which says that only a disabled target can be updated. (Sashiko) - Link to v2: https://patch.msgid.link/20260910-netcons_ratelimit-v2-0-ebf0dd91e26e@debian.org Changes in v2: - Drop the patch that sent a "N messages dropped by rate limit" notice to the target. (Gustavo Luiz Duarte). - Link to v1: https://patch.msgid.link/20260818-netcons_ratelimit-v1-0-8c5d2d17789c@debian.org --- Breno Leitao (5): netconsole: send the oops when oops_only is set netconsole: add a per-target message rate limit netconsole: allow configuring the rate limit interval through configfs netconsole: allow configuring the rate limit burst through configfs docs: netconsole: document rate limit feature Documentation/networking/netconsole.rst | 71 ++++++++++++++---- drivers/net/netconsole.c | 126 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++- 2 files changed, 181 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-) --- base-commit: c68a982815dcce5464e3bf2a31ac94f5146c04ca change-id: 20260817-netcons_ratelimit-629b04a73c57 Best regards, -- Breno Leitao [off-list ref]