xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/witness.4 (revision 1669d8afc64812c8d2d1d147ae1fd42ff441e1b1)
1.\" Copyright (c) 2001 John H. Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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25.\" $FreeBSD$
26.\"
27.Dd February 18, 2001
28.Dt WITNESS 4
29.Os
30.Sh NAME
31.Nm witness
32.Nd lock validation facility
33.Sh SYNOPSIS
34.Cd options WITNESS
35.Cd options WITNESS_KDB
36.Cd options WITNESS_SKIPSPIN
37.Sh DESCRIPTION
38The
39.Nm
40module keeps track of the locks acquired and released by each thread.
41It also keeps track of the order in which locks are acquired with respect
42to each other.
43Each time a lock is acquired,
44.Nm
45uses these two lists to verify that a lock is not being acquired in the
46wrong order.
47If a lock order violation is detected, then a message is output to the
48kernel console detailing the locks involved and the locations in question.
49Witness can also be configured to drop into the kernel debugger when an order
50violation occurs.
51.Pp
52The
53.Nm
54code also checks various other conditions such as verifying that one
55does not recurse on a non-recursive lock.
56For sleep locks,
57.Nm
58verifies that a new process would not be switched to when a lock is released
59or a lock is blocked on during an acquire while any spin locks are held.
60If any of these checks fail, then the kernel will panic.
61.Pp
62The flag that controls whether or not the kernel debugger is entered when a
63lock order violation is detected can be set in a variety of ways.
64By default, the flag is off, but if the
65.Dv WITNESS_KDB
66kernel option is
67specified, then the flag will default to on.
68It can also be set from the
69.Xr loader 8
70via the
71.Va debug.witness.kdb
72environment variable or after the kernel has booted via the
73.Va debug.witness.kdb
74sysctl.
75If the flag is set to zero, then the debugger will not be entered.
76If the flag is non-zero, then the debugger will be entered.
77.Pp
78The
79.Nm
80code can also be configured to skip all checks on spin mutexes.
81By default, this flag defaults to off, but it can be turned on by
82specifying the
83.Dv WITNESS_SKIPSPIN
84kernel option.
85The flag can also be set via the
86.Xr loader 8
87environment variable
88.Va debug.witness.skipspin .
89If the variable is set to a non-zero value, then spin mutexes are skipped.
90Once the kernel has booted, the status of this flag can be examined but not
91set via the read-only sysctl
92.Va debug.witness.skipspin .
93.Pp
94The sysctl
95.Va debug.witness.watch
96specifies the level of witness involvement in the system.
97A value of 1 specifies that witness is enabled.
98A value of 0 specifies that witness is disabled.
99This sysctl can be written to in order to
100disable witness, however it may not be used to enable witness.
101The sysctl
102.Va debug.witness.watch
103can be set via
104.Xr loader 8 .
105.Pp
106The
107.Nm
108code also provides two extra
109.Xr ddb 4
110commands if both
111.Nm
112and
113.Xr ddb 4
114are compiled into the kernel:
115.Bl -ohang
116.It Ic show locks
117Outputs the list of locks held by the current thread to the kernel console
118along with the filename and line number at which each lock was last acquired
119by this thread.
120.It Ic show witness
121Dump the current order list to the kernel console.
122The code first displays the lock order tree for all of the sleep locks.
123Then it displays the lock order tree for all of the spin locks.
124Finally, it displays a list of locks that have not yet been acquired.
125.El
126.Sh SEE ALSO
127.Xr ddb 4 ,
128.Xr loader 8 ,
129.Xr sysctl 8 ,
130.Xr mutex 9
131.Sh HISTORY
132The
133.Nm
134code first appeared in
135.Bsx 5.0
136and was imported from there into
137.Fx 5.0 .
138.Sh BUGS
139The
140.Nm
141code currently does not handle recursion of shared
142.Xr sx 9
143locks properly.
144