1 ===========================================
2 Fault injection capabilities infrastructure
3 ===========================================
5 See also drivers/md/md-faulty.c and "every_nth" module option for scsi_debug.
8 Available fault injection capabilities
9 --------------------------------------
13 injects slab allocation failures. (kmalloc(), kmem_cache_alloc(), ...)
17 injects page allocation failures. (alloc_pages(), get_free_pages(), ...)
21 injects failures in user memory access functions. (copy_from_user(), get_user(), ...)
25 injects futex deadlock and uaddr fault errors.
29 injects kernel RPC client and server failures.
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())
39 injects MMC data errors on devices permitted by setting
40 debugfs entries under /sys/kernel/debug/mmc0/fail_mmc_request
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.
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.
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.
61 By creating these controlled fault scenarios, the system can catch instances
62 where stale pointers are used, potentially leading to memory corruption or
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.
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
74 - NVMe fault injection
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.
81 - Null test block driver fault injection
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.
90 Configure fault-injection capabilities behavior
91 -----------------------------------------------
96 fault-inject-debugfs kernel module provides some debugfs entries for runtime
97 configuration of fault-injection capabilities.
99 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/probability:
101 likelihood of failure injection, in percent.
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.
109 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/interval:
111 specifies the interval between failures, for calls to
112 should_fail() that pass all the other tests.
114 Note that if you enable this, by setting interval>1, you will
115 probably want to set probability=100.
117 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/times:
119 specifies how many times failures may happen at most. A value of -1
122 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/space:
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.
128 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/verbose
130 Format: { 0 | 1 | 2 }
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.
137 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/task-filter:
139 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
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.
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:
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).
157 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail*/stacktrace-depth:
159 specifies the maximum stacktrace depth walked during search
160 for a caller within [require-start,require-end) OR
161 [reject-start,reject-end).
163 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/ignore-gfp-highmem:
165 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
167 default is 'Y', setting it to 'N' will also inject failures into
168 highmem/user allocations (__GFP_HIGHMEM allocations).
170 - /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/cache-filter
171 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
173 default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will only inject failures when
174 objects are requests from certain caches.
176 Select the cache by writing '1' to /sys/kernel/slab/<cache>/failslab:
178 - /sys/kernel/debug/failslab/ignore-gfp-wait:
179 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/ignore-gfp-wait:
181 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
183 default is 'Y', setting it to 'N' will also inject failures
184 into allocations that can sleep (__GFP_DIRECT_RECLAIM allocations).
186 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_page_alloc/min-order:
188 specifies the minimum page allocation order to be injected
191 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_futex/ignore-private:
193 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
195 default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable failure injections
196 when dealing with private (address space) futexes.
198 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-client-disconnect:
200 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
202 default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable disconnect
203 injection on the RPC client.
205 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-server-disconnect:
207 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
209 default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable disconnect
210 injection on the RPC server.
212 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_sunrpc/ignore-cache-wait:
214 Format: { 'Y' | 'N' }
216 default is 'N', setting it to 'Y' will disable cache wait
217 injection on the RPC server.
219 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/inject:
221 Format: { 'function-name' | '!function-name' | '' }
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.
228 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/injectable:
230 (read only) shows error injectable functions and what type of
231 error values can be specified. The error type will be one of
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).
237 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_function/<function-name>/retval:
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
245 - /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname:
247 Specifies the network interface on which to force SKB reallocation. If
248 left empty, SKB reallocation will be applied to all network interfaces.
252 # Force skb reallocation on eth0
253 echo "eth0" > /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname
255 # Clear the selection and force skb reallocation on all interfaces
256 echo "" > /sys/kernel/debug/fail_skb_realloc/devname
261 In order to inject faults while debugfs is not available (early boot time),
262 use the boot option::
270 mmc_core.fail_request=<interval>,<probability>,<space>,<times>
275 - /proc/<pid>/fail-nth,
276 /proc/self/task/<tid>/fail-nth:
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.
287 This feature is intended for systematic testing of faults in a single
288 system call. See an example below.
291 Error Injectable Functions
292 --------------------------
294 This part is for the kernel developers considering to add a function to
295 ALLOW_ERROR_INJECTION() macro.
297 Requirements for the Error Injectable Functions
298 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
300 Since the function-level error injection forcibly changes the code path
301 and returns an error even if the input and conditions are proper, this can
302 cause unexpected kernel crash if you allow error injection on the function
303 which is NOT error injectable. Thus, you (and reviewers) must ensure;
305 - The function returns an error code if it fails, and the callers must check
306 it correctly (need to recover from it).
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.)
314 The first requirement is important, and it will result in that the release
315 (free objects) functions are usually harder to inject errors than allocate
316 functions. If errors of such release functions are not correctly handled
317 it will cause a memory leak easily (the caller will confuse that the object
318 has been released or corrupted.)
320 The second one is for the caller which expects the function should always
321 does something. Thus if the function error injection skips whole of the
322 function, the expectation is betrayed and causes an unexpected error.
324 Type of the Error Injectable Functions
325 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
327 Each error injectable functions will have the error type specified by the
328 ALLOW_ERROR_INJECTION() macro. You have to choose it carefully if you add
329 a new error injectable function. If the wrong error type is chosen, the
330 kernel may crash because it may not be able to handle the error.
331 There are 4 types of errors defined in include/asm-generic/error-injection.h
334 This function will return `NULL` if it fails. e.g. return an allocated
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.
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.
348 This function will return `true` (non-zero positive value) if it fails.
350 If you specifies a wrong type, for example, EI_TYPE_ERRNO for the function
351 which returns an allocated object, it may cause a problem because the returned
352 value is not an object address and the caller can not access to the address.
355 How to add new fault injection capability
356 -----------------------------------------
358 - #include <linux/fault-inject.h>
360 - define the fault attributes
362 DECLARE_FAULT_ATTR(name);
364 Please see the definition of struct fault_attr in fault-inject.h
367 - provide a way to configure fault attributes
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:
374 setup_fault_attr(attr, str);
378 failslab, fail_page_alloc, fail_usercopy, and fail_make_request use this way.
381 fault_create_debugfs_attr(name, parent, attr);
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.
389 - add a hook to insert failures
391 Upon should_fail() returning true, client code should inject a failure:
393 should_fail(attr, size);
398 - Inject slab allocation failures into module init/exit code::
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
413 bash -c "echo 1 > /proc/self/make-it-fail && exec $*"
418 echo "Usage: $0 modulename [ modulename ... ]"
425 faulty_system modprobe $m
428 faulty_system modprobe -r $m
431 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
433 - Inject page allocation failures only for a specific module::
437 FAILTYPE=fail_page_alloc
442 echo "Usage: $0 <modulename>"
448 if [ ! -d /sys/module/$module/sections ]
450 echo Module $module is not loaded
454 cat /sys/module/$module/sections/.text > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/require-start
455 cat /sys/module/$module/sections/.data > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/require-end
457 echo N > /sys/kernel/debug/$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
467 trap "echo 0 > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/probability" SIGINT SIGTERM EXIT
469 echo "Injecting errors into the module $module... (interrupt to stop)"
472 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
474 - Inject open_ctree error while btrfs mount::
479 dd if=/dev/zero of=testfile.img bs=1M seek=1000 count=1
480 DEVICE=$(losetup --show -f testfile.img)
481 mkfs.btrfs -f $DEVICE
484 FAILTYPE=fail_function
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
495 mount -t btrfs $DEVICE tmpmnt
504 echo > /sys/kernel/debug/$FAILTYPE/inject
510 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
512 - Inject only skbuff allocation failures ::
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
523 Tool to run command with failslab or fail_page_alloc
524 ----------------------------------------------------
525 In order to make it easier to accomplish the tasks mentioned above, we can use
526 tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh. Please run a command
527 "./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --help" for more information and
528 see the following examples.
532 Run a command "make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests" with injecting slab
535 # ./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh \
536 -- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
538 Same as above except to specify 100 times failures at most instead of one time
541 # ./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --times=100 \
542 -- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
544 Same as above except to inject page allocation failure instead of slab
547 # env FAILCMD_TYPE=fail_page_alloc \
548 ./tools/testing/fault-injection/failcmd.sh --times=100 \
549 -- make -C tools/testing/selftests/ run_tests
551 Systematic faults using fail-nth
552 ---------------------------------
554 The following code systematically faults 0-th, 1-st, 2-nd and so on
555 capabilities in the socketpair() system call::
557 #include <sys/types.h>
558 #include <sys/stat.h>
559 #include <sys/socket.h>
560 #include <sys/syscall.h>
570 int i, err, res, fail_nth, fds[2];
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);
577 sprintf(buf, "%d", i);
578 write(fail_nth, buf, strlen(buf));
579 res = socketpair(AF_LOCAL, SOCK_STREAM, 0, fds);
581 pread(fail_nth, buf, sizeof(buf), 0);
586 printf("%d-th fault %c: res=%d/%d\n", i, atoi(buf) ? 'N' : 'Y',
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