[RHEL6.0] Bringing e1000 NIC up/down using ifconfig in RHEL5.6 KVM guest causes data corruption

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • The server sometimes panics when bringing e1000 NIC up/down using ifconfig command on a RHEL5.6 KVM guest running on RHEL6.0 host.
  • The panic occurs in various places in the kernel, so it seems some kind of data-corruption problem is causing this panic.
  • Also symptoms such as system stalls, page cache corruption, and error messages like
    swap_free: Bad swap offset entry 01000000

  and

mm/memory.c:120: bad pmd ffff81003e1146c8(0000000100000000)

  could also be observed.

  • The problem does not occur on bare-metal kernel.
  • The problem also occurs on RHEL5.6 guest running on RHEL6.1 beta host.
  • The problem does not occur when using virtio or rtl8139 virtual NIC, although a different problem occurs on rtl8139 virtual NIC.
  • The problem occurs on RHEL5.5 guest running on RHEL5.5 host.
  • Below is a panic message which could be frequently seen.
    Unable to handle kernel paging request at 00000001000000cc RIP:
[<ffffffff8022f131>] consume_skb+0xe/0x61
PGD 21e3e067 PUD 0
Oops: 0000 [1] SMP
last sysfs file: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:08.0/irq
CPU 0
Modules linked in: autofs4 hidp rfcomm l2cap bluetooth lockd sunrpc be2iscsi ib_iser rdma_cm ib_cm iw_cm ib_sa ib_mad ib_core ib_addr iscsi_tcp bnx2i cnic ipv6 xfrm_nalgo crypto_api uio cxgb3i cxgb3 8021q libiscsi_tcp libiscsi2 scsi_transport_iscsi2 scsi_transport_iscsi dm_mirror dm_multipath scsi_dh video backlight sbs power_meter hwmon i2c_ec dell_wmi wmi button battery asus_acpi acpi_memhotplug ac parport_pc lp parport floppy snd_intel8x0 snd_ac97_codec ac97_bus snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq snd_seq_device e1000 snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss tpm_tis snd_pcm snd_timer virtio_balloon tpm snd i2c_piix4 soundcore ide_cd i2c_core snd_page_alloc serio_raw tpm_bios cdrom pcspkr dm_raid45 dm_message dm_region_hash dm_log dm_mod dm_mem_cache ata_piix libata sd_mod scsi_mod virtio_blk virtio_pci virtio_ring virtio ext3 jbd uhci_hcd ohci_hcd ehci_hcd
Pid: 10334, comm: ifcnofig Not tainted 2.6.18-238.el5 #1
RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff8022f131>]  [<ffffffff8022f131>] consume_skb+0xe/0x61
RSP: 0018:ffff810020ca5d18  EFLAGS: 00010206
RAX: 0000000000000246 RBX: 0000000100000000 RCX: 00000000000000cd
RDX: ffffc20000026000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: 0000000100000000
RBP: 00000000000000ce R08: 000000000000000f R09: ffff81003f2d0860
R10: ac00810020ca5d20 R11: 0000000080358b00 R12: ffff81003f2d0500
R13: ffff81003f2d0860 R14: ffff81003f2d0000 R15: ffff81003f4a5010
FS:  00002b47130565e0(0000) GS:ffffffff80425000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 000000008005003b
CR2: 00000001000000cc CR3: 0000000020ce2000 CR4: 00000000000006e0
Process ifcnofig (pid: 10334, threadinfo ffff810020ca4000, task ffff810022f8c7a0)
Stack:  0000000080358b00 ffffc20000028008 00000000000000ce ffffffff88297026
ffff81003e951680 ffffffff88297064 00000000000000b6 ffff81003f2d0500
0000000000000001 ffff81003f2d0860 0000000000000000 ffffffff88298159
Call Trace:
[<ffffffff88297026>] :e1000:e1000_unmap_and_free_tx_resource+0x49/0x5a
[<ffffffff88297064>] :e1000:e1000_clean_tx_ring+0x2d/0x8a
[<ffffffff88298159>] :e1000:e1000_down+0xee/0x102
[<ffffffff88299697>] :e1000:e1000_close+0x4d/0xc5
[<ffffffff80233b84>] dev_close+0x53/0x77
[<ffffffff80232c87>] dev_change_flags+0x5a/0x119
[<ffffffff80267545>] devinet_ioctl+0x235/0x59c
[<ffffffff8022a579>] sock_ioctl+0x1c1/0x1e5
[<ffffffff8004226a>] do_ioctl+0x21/0x6b
[<ffffffff8003026e>] vfs_ioctl+0x457/0x4b9
[<ffffffff800b9609>] audit_syscall_entry+0x1a4/0x1cf
[<ffffffff8004c73b>] sys_ioctl+0x59/0x78
[<ffffffff8005d28d>] tracesys+0xd5/0xe0


Code: 8b 87 cc 00 00 00 ff c8 75 05 0f ae e8 eb 0e f0 ff 8f cc 00
RIP  [<ffffffff8022f131>] consume_skb+0xe/0x61
RSP <ffff810020ca5d18>
  • Additional info: When the problem occurs, exactly one page in the guest OS is filled with the following pattern.
    0x0000000000000000      0x0000000100000000

Environment

  • Host: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 / RHEL6.1 beta
  • Guest: RHEL5.6

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