xref: /linux/Documentation/fault-injection/fault-injection.rst (revision 7f71507851fc7764b36a3221839607d3a45c2025)
1===========================================
2Fault injection capabilities infrastructure
3===========================================
4
5See also drivers/md/md-faulty.c and "every_nth" module option for scsi_debug.
6
7
8Available fault injection capabilities
9--------------------------------------
10
11- failslab
12
13  injects slab allocation failures. (kmalloc(), kmem_cache_alloc(), ...)
14
15- fail_page_alloc
16
17  injects page allocation failures. (alloc_pages(), get_free_pages(), ...)
18
19- fail_usercopy
20
21  injects failures in user memory access functions. (copy_from_user(), get_user(), ...)
22
23- fail_futex
24
25  injects futex deadlock and uaddr fault errors.
26
27- fail_sunrpc
28
29  injects kernel RPC client and server failures.
30
31- fail_make_request
32
33  injects disk IO errors on devices permitted by setting
34  /sys/block/<device>/make-it-fail or
35  /sys/block/<device>/<partition>/make-it-fail. (submit_bio_noacct())
36
37- fail_mmc_request
38
39  injects MMC data errors on devices permitted by setting
40  debugfs entries under /sys/kernel/debug/mmc0/fail_mmc_request
41
42- fail_function
43
44  injects error return on specific functions, which are marked by
45  ALLOW_ERROR_INJECTION() macro, by setting debugfs entries
46  under /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function. No boot option supported.
47
48- fail_skb_realloc
49
50  inject skb (socket buffer) reallocation events into the network path. The
51  primary goal is to identify and prevent issues related to pointer
52  mismanagement in the network subsystem.  By forcing skb reallocation at
53  strategic points, this feature creates scenarios where existing pointers to
54  skb headers become invalid.
55
56  When the fault is injected and the reallocation is triggered, cached pointers
57  to skb headers and data no longer reference valid memory locations. This
58  deliberate invalidation helps expose code paths where proper pointer updating
59  is neglected after a reallocation event.
60
61  By creating these controlled fault scenarios, the system can catch instances
62  where stale pointers are used, potentially leading to memory corruption or
63  system instability.
64
65  To select the interface to act on, write the network name to
66  /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname.
67  If this field is left empty (which is the default value), skb reallocation
68  will be forced on all network interfaces.
69
70  The effectiveness of this fault detection is enhanced when KASAN is
71  enabled, as it helps identify invalid memory references and use-after-free
72  (UAF) issues.
73
74- NVMe fault injection
75
76  inject NVMe status code and retry flag on devices permitted by setting
77  debugfs entries under /sys/kernel/debug/nvme*/fault_inject. The default
78  status code is NVME_SC_INVALID_OPCODE with no retry. The status code and
79  retry flag can be set via the debugfs.
80
81- Null test block driver fault injection
82
83  inject IO timeouts by setting config items under
84  /sys/kernel/config/nullb/<disk>/timeout_inject,
85  inject requeue requests by setting config items under
86  /sys/kernel/config/nullb/<disk>/requeue_inject, and
87  inject init_hctx() errors by setting config items under
88  /sys/kernel/config/nullb/<disk>/init_hctx_fault_inject.
89
90Configure fault-injection capabilities behavior
91-----------------------------------------------
92
93debugfs entries
94^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
95
96fault-inject-debugfs kernel module provides some debugfs entries for runtime
97configuration of fault-injection capabilities.
98
99- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/probability:
100
101	likelihood of failure injection, in percent.
102
103	Format: <percent>
104
105	Note that one-failure-per-hundred is a very high error rate
106	for some testcases.  Consider setting probability=100 and configure
107	/sys/kernel/debug/fail*/interval for such testcases.
108
109- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/interval:
110
111	specifies the interval between failures, for calls to
112	should_fail() that pass all the other tests.
113
114	Note that if you enable this, by setting interval>1, you will
115	probably want to set probability=100.
116
117- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/times:
118
119	specifies how many times failures may happen at most. A value of -1
120	means "no limit".
121
122- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/space:
123
124	specifies an initial resource "budget", decremented by "size"
125	on each call to should_fail(,size).  Failure injection is
126	suppressed until "space" reaches zero.
127
128- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/verbose
129
130	Format: { 0 | 1 | 2 }
131
132	specifies the verbosity of the messages when failure is
133	injected.  '0' means no messages; '1' will print only a single
134	log line per failure; '2' will print a call trace too -- useful
135	to debug the problems revealed by fault injection.
136
137- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/task-filter:
138
139	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
140
141	A value of 'N' disables filtering by process (default).
142	Any positive value limits failures to only processes indicated by
143	/proc/<pid>/make-it-fail==1.
144
145- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/require-start,
146  /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/require-end,
147  /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/reject-start,
148  /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/reject-end:
149
150	specifies the range of virtual addresses tested during
151	stacktrace walking.  Failure is injected only if some caller
152	in the walked stacktrace lies within the required range, and
153	none lies within the rejected range.
154	Default required range is [0,ULONG_MAX) (whole of virtual address space).
155	Default rejected range is [0,0).
156
157- /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/stacktrace-depth:
158
159	specifies the maximum stacktrace depth walked during search
160	for a caller within [require-start,require-end) OR
161	[reject-start,reject-end).
162
163- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/ignore-gfp-highmem:
164
165	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
166
167	default is 'Y', setting it to 'N' will also inject failures into
168	highmem/user allocations (__GFP_HIGHMEM allocations).
169
170- /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/cache-filter
171	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
172
173        default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will only inject failures when
174        objects are requests from certain caches.
175
176        Select the cache by writing '1' to /sys/kernel/slab/<cache>/failslab:
177
178- /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/ignore-gfp-wait:
179- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/ignore-gfp-wait:
180
181	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
182
183	default is 'Y', setting it to 'N' will also inject failures
184	into allocations that can sleep (__GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM allocations).
185
186- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/min-order:
187
188	specifies the minimum page allocation order to be injected
189	failures.
190
191- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_futex/ignore-private:
192
193	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
194
195	default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable failure injections
196	when dealing with private (address space) futexes.
197
198- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-client-disconnect:
199
200	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
201
202	default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable disconnect
203	injection on the RPC client.
204
205- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-server-disconnect:
206
207	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
208
209	default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable disconnect
210	injection on the RPC server.
211
212- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-cache-wait:
213
214	Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
215
216	default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable cache wait
217	injection on the RPC server.
218
219- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/inject:
220
221	Format: { 'function-name' | '!function-name' | '' }
222
223	specifies the target function of error injection by name.
224	If the function name leads '!' prefix, given function is
225	removed from injection list. If nothing specified ('')
226	injection list is cleared.
227
228- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/injectable:
229
230	(read only) shows error injectable functions and what type of
231	error values can be specified. The error type will be one of
232	below;
233	- NULL:	retval must be 0.
234	- ERRNO: retval must be -1 to -MAX_ERRNO (-4096).
235	- ERR_NULL: retval must be 0 or -1 to -MAX_ERRNO (-4096).
236
237- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/<function-name>/retval:
238
239	specifies the "error" return value to inject to the given function.
240	This will be created when the user specifies a new injection entry.
241	Note that this file only accepts unsigned values. So, if you want to
242	use a negative errno, you better use 'printf' instead of 'echo', e.g.:
243	$ printf %#x -12 > retval
244
245- /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname:
246
247        Specifies the network interface on which to force SKB reallocation.  If
248        left empty, SKB reallocation will be applied to all network interfaces.
249
250        Example usage::
251
252          # Force skb reallocation on eth0
253          echo "eth0" > /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname
254
255          # Clear the selection and force skb reallocation on all interfaces
256          echo "" > /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname
257
258Boot option
259^^^^^^^^^^^
260
261In order to inject faults while debugfs is not available (early boot time),
262use the boot option::
263
264	failslab=
265	fail_page_alloc=
266	fail_usercopy=
267	fail_make_request=
268	fail_futex=
269	fail_skb_realloc=
270	mmc_core.fail_request=<interval>,<probability>,<space>,<times>
271
272proc entries
273^^^^^^^^^^^^
274
275- /proc/<pid>/fail-nth,
276  /proc/self/task/<tid>/fail-nth:
277
278	Write to this file of integer N makes N-th call in the task fail.
279	Read from this file returns a integer value. A value of '0' indicates
280	that the fault setup with a previous write to this file was injected.
281	A positive integer N indicates that the fault wasn't yet injected.
282	Note that this file enables all types of faults (slab, futex, etc).
283	This setting takes precedence over all other generic debugfs settings
284	like probability, interval, times, etc. But per-capability settings
285	(e.g. fail_futex/ignore-private) take precedence over it.
286
287	This feature is intended for systematic testing of faults in a single
288	system call. See an example below.
289
290
291Error Injectable Functions
292--------------------------
293
294This part is for the kernel developers considering to add a function to
295ALLOW_ERROR_INJECTION() macro.
296
297Requirements for the Error Injectable Functions
298^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
299
300Since the function-level error injection forcibly changes the code path
301and returns an error even if the input and conditions are proper, this can
302cause unexpected kernel crash if you allow error injection on the function
303which is NOT error injectable. Thus, you (and reviewers) must ensure;
304
305- The function returns an error code if it fails, and the callers must check
306  it correctly (need to recover from it).
307
308- The function does not execute any code which can change any state before
309  the first error return. The state includes global or local, or input
310  variable. For example, clear output address storage (e.g. `*ret = NULL`),
311  increments/decrements counter, set a flag, preempt/irq disable or get
312  a lock (if those are recovered before returning error, that will be OK.)
313
314The first requirement is important, and it will result in that the release
315(free objects) functions are usually harder to inject errors than allocate
316functions. If errors of such release functions are not correctly handled
317it will cause a memory leak easily (the caller will confuse that the object
318has been released or corrupted.)
319
320The second one is for the caller which expects the function should always
321does something. Thus if the function error injection skips whole of the
322function, the expectation is betrayed and causes an unexpected error.
323
324Type of the Error Injectable Functions
325^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
326
327Each error injectable functions will have the error type specified by the
328ALLOW_ERROR_INJECTION() macro. You have to choose it carefully if you add
329a new error injectable function. If the wrong error type is chosen, the
330kernel may crash because it may not be able to handle the error.
331There are 4 types of errors defined in include/asm-generic/error-injection.h
332
333EI_ETYPE_NULL
334  This function will return `NULL` if it fails. e.g. return an allocated
335  object address.
336
337EI_ETYPE_ERRNO
338  This function will return an `-errno` error code if it fails. e.g. return
339  -EINVAL if the input is wrong. This will include the functions which will
340  return an address which encodes `-errno` by ERR_PTR() macro.
341
342EI_ETYPE_ERRNO_NULL
343  This function will return an `-errno` or `NULL` if it fails. If the caller
344  of this function checks the return value with IS_ERR_OR_NULL() macro, this
345  type will be appropriate.
346
347EI_ETYPE_TRUE
348  This function will return `true` (non-zero positive value) if it fails.
349
350If you specifies a wrong type, for example, EI_TYPE_ERRNO for the function
351which returns an allocated object, it may cause a problem because the returned
352value is not an object address and the caller can not access to the address.
353
354
355How to add new fault injection capability
356-----------------------------------------
357
358- #include <linux/fault-inject.h>
359
360- define the fault attributes
361
362  DECLARE_FAULT_ATTR(name);
363
364  Please see the definition of struct fault_attr in fault-inject.h
365  for details.
366
367- provide a way to configure fault attributes
368
369- boot option
370
371  If you need to enable the fault injection capability from boot time, you can
372  provide boot option to configure it. There is a helper function for it:
373
374	setup_fault_attr(attr, str);
375
376- debugfs entries
377
378  failslab, fail_page_alloc, fail_usercopy, and fail_make_request use this way.
379  Helper functions:
380
381	fault_create_debugfs_attr(name, parent, attr);
382
383- module parameters
384
385  If the scope of the fault injection capability is limited to a
386  single kernel module, it is better to provide module parameters to
387  configure the fault attributes.
388
389- add a hook to insert failures
390
391  Upon should_fail() returning true, client code should inject a failure:
392
393	should_fail(attr, size);
394
395Application Examples
396--------------------
397
398- Inject slab allocation failures into module init/exit code::
399
400    #!/bin/bash
401
402    FAILTYPE=failslab
403    echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/task-filter
404    echo 10 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/probability
405    echo 100 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/interval
406    echo -1 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/times
407    echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/space
408    echo 2 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/verbose
409    echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/ignore-gfp-wait
410
411    faulty_system()
412    {
413	bash -c "echo 1 > /proc/self/make-it-fail && exec $*"
414    }
415
416    if [ $# -eq 0 ]
417    then
418	echo "Usage: $0 modulename [ modulename ... ]"
419	exit 1
420    fi
421
422    for m in $*
423    do
424	echo inserting $m...
425	faulty_system modprobe $m
426
427	echo removing $m...
428	faulty_system modprobe -r $m
429    done
430
431------------------------------------------------------------------------------
432
433- Inject page allocation failures only for a specific module::
434
435    #!/bin/bash
436
437    FAILTYPE=fail_page_alloc
438    module=$1
439
440    if [ -z $module ]
441    then
442	echo "Usage: $0 <modulename>"
443	exit 1
444    fi
445
446    modprobe $module
447
448    if [ ! -d /sys/module/$module/sections ]
449    then
450	echo Module $module is not loaded
451	exit 1
452    fi
453
454    cat /sys/module/$module/sections/.text > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/require-start
455    cat /sys/module/$module/sections/.data > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/require-end
456
457    echo N > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/task-filter
458    echo 10 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/probability
459    echo 100 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/interval
460    echo -1 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/times
461    echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/space
462    echo 2 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/verbose
463    echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/ignore-gfp-wait
464    echo Y > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/ignore-gfp-highmem
465    echo 10 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/stacktrace-depth
466
467    trap "echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/probability" SIGINT SIGTERM EXIT
468
469    echo "Injecting errors into the module $module... (interrupt to stop)"
470    sleep 1000000
471
472------------------------------------------------------------------------------
473
474- Inject open_ctree error while btrfs mount::
475
476    #!/bin/bash
477
478    rm -f testfile.img
479    dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile.img bs=1M seek=1000 count=1
480    DEVICE=$(losetup --show -f testfile.img)
481    mkfs.btrfs -f $DEVICE
482    mkdir -p tmpmnt
483
484    FAILTYPE=fail_function
485    FAILFUNC=open_ctree
486    echo $FAILFUNC > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/inject
487    printf %#x -12 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/$FAILFUNC/retval
488    echo N > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/task-filter
489    echo 100 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/probability
490    echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/interval
491    echo -1 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/times
492    echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/space
493    echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/verbose
494
495    mount -t btrfs $DEVICE tmpmnt
496    if [ $? -ne 0 ]
497    then
498	echo "SUCCESS!"
499    else
500	echo "FAILED!"
501	umount tmpmnt
502    fi
503
504    echo > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/inject
505
506    rmdir tmpmnt
507    losetup -d $DEVICE
508    rm testfile.img
509
510------------------------------------------------------------------------------
511
512- Inject only skbuff allocation failures ::
513
514    # mark skbuff_head_cache as faulty
515    echo 1 > /sys/kernel/slab/skbuff_head_cache/failslab
516    # Turn on cache filter (off by default)
517    echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/cache-filter
518    # Turn on fault injection
519    echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/times
520    echo 1 > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/probability
521
522
523Tool to run command with failslab or fail_page_alloc
524----------------------------------------------------
525In order to make it easier to accomplish the tasks mentioned above, we can use
526tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh.  Please run a command
527"./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --help" for more information and
528see the following examples.
529
530Examples:
531
532Run a command "make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests" with injecting slab
533allocation failure::
534
535	# ./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh \
536		-- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
537
538Same as above except to specify 100 times failures at most instead of one time
539at most by default::
540
541	# ./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --times=100 \
542		-- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
543
544Same as above except to inject page allocation failure instead of slab
545allocation failure::
546
547	# env FAILCMD_TYPE=fail_page_alloc \
548		./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --times=100 \
549		-- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
550
551Systematic faults using fail-nth
552---------------------------------
553
554The following code systematically faults 0-th, 1-st, 2-nd and so on
555capabilities in the socketpair() system call::
556
557  #include <sys/types.h>
558  #include <sys/stat.h>
559  #include <sys/socket.h>
560  #include <sys/syscall.h>
561  #include <fcntl.h>
562  #include <unistd.h>
563  #include <string.h>
564  #include <stdlib.h>
565  #include <stdio.h>
566  #include <errno.h>
567
568  int main()
569  {
570	int i, err, res, fail_nth, fds[2];
571	char buf[128];
572
573	system("echo N > /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/ignore-gfp-wait");
574	sprintf(buf, "/proc/self/task/%ld/fail-nth", syscall(SYS_gettid));
575	fail_nth = open(buf, O_RDWR);
576	for (i = 1;; i++) {
577		sprintf(buf, "%d", i);
578		write(fail_nth, buf, strlen(buf));
579		res = socketpair(AF_LOCAL, SOCK_STREAM, 0, fds);
580		err = errno;
581		pread(fail_nth, buf, sizeof(buf), 0);
582		if (res == 0) {
583			close(fds[0]);
584			close(fds[1]);
585		}
586		printf("%d-th fault %c: res=%d/%d\n", i, atoi(buf) ? 'N' : 'Y',
587			res, err);
588		if (atoi(buf))
589			break;
590	}
591	return 0;
592  }
593
594An example output::
595
596	1-th fault Y: res=-1/23
597	2-th fault Y: res=-1/23
598	3-th fault Y: res=-1/12
599	4-th fault Y: res=-1/12
600	5-th fault Y: res=-1/23
601	6-th fault Y: res=-1/23
602	7-th fault Y: res=-1/23
603	8-th fault Y: res=-1/12
604	9-th fault Y: res=-1/12
605	10-th fault Y: res=-1/12
606	11-th fault Y: res=-1/12
607	12-th fault Y: res=-1/12
608	13-th fault Y: res=-1/12
609	14-th fault Y: res=-1/12
610	15-th fault Y: res=-1/12
611	16-th fault N: res=0/12
612