GitLab

commit b284909a upstream.

With the following commit:

  73d5e2b4 ("cpu/hotplug: detect SMT disabled by BIOS")

... the hotplug code attempted to detect when SMT was disabled by BIOS,
in which case it reported SMT as permanently disabled.  However, that
code broke a virt hotplug scenario, where the guest is booted with only
primary CPU threads, and a sibling is brought online later.

The problem is that there doesn't seem to be a way to reliably
distinguish between the HW "SMT disabled by BIOS" case and the virt
"sibling not yet brought online" case.  So the above-mentioned commit
was a bit misguided, as it permanently disabled SMT for both cases,
preventing future virt sibling hotplugs.

Going back and reviewing the original problems which were attempted to
be solved by that commit, when SMT was disabled in BIOS:

  1) /sys/devices/system/cpu/smt/control showed "on" instead of
     "notsupported"; and

  2) vmx_...