xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/witness.4 (revision 4f8f43b06ed07e96a250855488cc531799d5b78f)
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24.Dd November 18, 2015
25.Dt WITNESS 4
26.Os
27.Sh NAME
28.Nm witness
29.Nd lock validation facility
30.Sh SYNOPSIS
31.Cd options WITNESS
32.Cd options WITNESS_COUNT
33.Cd options WITNESS_KDB
34.Cd options WITNESS_NO_VNODE
35.Cd options WITNESS_SKIPSPIN
36.Sh DESCRIPTION
37The
38.Nm
39module keeps track of the locks acquired and released by each thread.
40It also keeps track of the order in which locks are acquired with respect
41to each other.
42Each time a lock is acquired,
43.Nm
44uses these two lists to verify that a lock is not being acquired in the
45wrong order.
46If a lock order violation is detected, then a message is output to the
47kernel console or log detailing the locks involved and the locations in
48question.
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,
56or attempt an upgrade on a shared lock held by another thread.
57If any of these checks fail, then the kernel will panic.
58.Pp
59The
60.Dv WITNESS_COUNT
61kernel option controls the maximum number of
62.Nm
63entries that are tracked in the kernel.
64The maximum number of entries can be queried via the
65.Va debug.witness.count
66sysctl.
67It can also be set from the
68.Xr loader 8
69via the
70.Va debug.witness.count
71environment variable.
72.Pp
73The
74.Dv WITNESS_NO_VNODE
75kernel option tells
76.Nm
77to ignore locking issues between
78.Xr vnode 9
79objects.
80.Pp
81The flag that controls whether or not the kernel debugger is entered when a
82lock order violation is detected can be set in a variety of ways.
83By default, the flag is off, but if the
84.Dv WITNESS_KDB
85kernel option is
86specified, then the flag will default to on.
87It can also be set from the
88.Xr loader 8
89via the
90.Va debug.witness.kdb
91environment variable or after the kernel has booted via the
92.Va debug.witness.kdb
93sysctl.
94If the flag is set to zero, then the debugger will not be entered.
95If the flag is non-zero, then the debugger will be entered.
96.Pp
97The
98.Nm
99code can also be configured to skip all checks on spin mutexes.
100By default, this flag defaults to off, but it can be turned on by
101specifying the
102.Dv WITNESS_SKIPSPIN
103kernel option.
104The flag can also be set via the
105.Xr loader 8
106environment variable
107.Va debug.witness.skipspin .
108If the variable is set to a non-zero value, then spin mutexes are skipped.
109Once the kernel has booted, the status of this flag can be examined but not
110set via the read-only sysctl
111.Va debug.witness.skipspin .
112.Pp
113The sysctl
114.Va debug.witness.watch
115specifies the level of witness involvement in the system.
116A value of 1 specifies that witness is enabled.
117A value of 0 specifies that witness is disabled, but that can be enabled
118again.
119This will maintain a small amount of overhead in the system.
120A value of -1 specifies that witness is disabled permanently and
121cannot be enabled again.
122The sysctl
123.Va debug.witness.watch
124can be set via
125.Xr loader 8 .
126.Pp
127The sysctl
128.Va debug.witness.output_channel
129specifies the output channel used to display warnings emitted by
130.Nm .
131The possible values are
132.Ql console ,
133indicating that warnings are to be printed to the system console,
134.Ql log ,
135indicating that warnings are to be logged via
136.Xr log 9 ,
137and
138.Ql none .
139This sysctl can be set via
140.Xr loader 8 .
141.Pp
142The
143.Nm
144code also provides three extra
145.Xr ddb 4
146commands if both
147.Nm
148and
149.Xr ddb 4
150are compiled into the kernel:
151.Bl -ohang
152.It Ic show locks Op thread
153Outputs the list of locks held by a thread to the kernel console
154along with the filename and line number at which each lock was last acquired
155by the thread.
156The optional
157.Ar thread
158argument may be either a TID,
159PID,
160or pointer to a thread structure.
161If
162.Ar thread
163is not specified,
164then the locks held by the current thread are displayed.
165.It Ic show all locks
166Outputs the list of locks held by all threads in the system to the
167kernel console.
168.It Ic show witness
169Dump the current order list to the kernel console.
170The code first displays the lock order tree for all of the sleep locks.
171Then it displays the lock order tree for all of the spin locks.
172Finally, it displays a list of locks that have not yet been acquired.
173.El
174.Sh SEE ALSO
175.Xr ddb 4 ,
176.Xr loader 8 ,
177.Xr sysctl 8 ,
178.Xr mutex 9
179.Sh HISTORY
180The
181.Nm
182code first appeared in
183.Bsx 5.0
184and was imported from there into
185.Fx 5.0 .
186