The xen_lock_spinning has a check for the kicker interrupts
and if it is not initialized it will spin normally (not enter
the slowpath).
But for PVHVM case we would initialize the kicker interrupt
before the CPU came online. This meant that if the booting
CPU used a spinlock and went in the slowpath - it would
enter the slowpath and block forever. The forever part because
during bootup: the spinlock would be taken _before_ the CPU
sets itself to be online (more on this further), and we enter
to poll on the event channel forever.
The bootup CPU (see commit fc78d343fa
"xen/smp: initialize IPI vectors before marking CPU online"
for details) and the CPU that started the bootup consult
the cpu_online_mask to determine whether the booting CPU should
get an IPI. The booting CPU has to set itself in this mask via:
set_cpu_online(smp_processor_id(), true);
However, if the spinlock is taken before this (and it is) and
it polls on an event channel - it will never be woken up as
the kernel will never send an IPI to an offline CPU.
Note that the PVHVM logic in sending IPIs is using the HVM
path which has numerous checks using the cpu_online_mask
and cpu_active_mask. See above mention git commit for details.
Signed-off-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@citrix.com>