https://github.com/torvalds/linux
Revision 50f5aa8a9b248fa4262cf379863ec9a531b49737 authored by Linus Torvalds on 28 April 2014, 21:24:09 UTC, committed by Linus Torvalds on 28 April 2014, 21:24:09 UTC
BUG_ON() is a big hammer, and should be used _only_ if there is some
major corruption that you cannot possibly recover from, making it
imperative that the current process (and possibly the whole machine) be
terminated with extreme prejudice.

The trivial sanity check in the vmacache code is *not* such a fatal
error.  Recovering from it is absolutely trivial, and using BUG_ON()
just makes it harder to debug for no actual advantage.

To make matters worse, the placement of the BUG_ON() (only if the range
check matched) actually makes it harder to hit the sanity check to begin
with, so _if_ there is a bug (and we just got a report from Srivatsa
Bhat that this can indeed trigger), it is harder to debug not just
because the machine is possibly dead, but because we don't have better
coverage.

BUG_ON() must *die*.  Maybe we should add a checkpatch warning for it,
because it is simply just about the worst thing you can ever do if you
hit some "this cannot happen" situation.

Reported-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa.bhat@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Cc: Davidlohr Bueso <davidlohr@hp.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
1 parent d1db0ee
History
Tip revision: 50f5aa8a9b248fa4262cf379863ec9a531b49737 authored by Linus Torvalds on 28 April 2014, 21:24:09 UTC
mm: don't pointlessly use BUG_ON() for sanity check
Tip revision: 50f5aa8
File Mode Size
Documentation
arch
block
crypto
drivers
firmware
fs
include
init
ipc
kernel
lib
mm
net
samples
scripts
security
sound
tools
usr
virt
.gitignore -rw-r--r-- 1.1 KB
.mailmap -rw-r--r-- 4.4 KB
COPYING -rw-r--r-- 18.3 KB
CREDITS -rw-r--r-- 93.6 KB
Kbuild -rw-r--r-- 2.5 KB
Kconfig -rw-r--r-- 252 bytes
MAINTAINERS -rw-r--r-- 271.4 KB
Makefile -rw-r--r-- 50.5 KB
README -rw-r--r-- 18.3 KB
REPORTING-BUGS -rw-r--r-- 7.3 KB

README

back to top