Back in the day, CPU hotplug was an optional and rarely used feature of Linux kernels built for SMP systems. However, increasing numbers of popular CPU families prohibit building Linux kernels with both CONFIG_CPU_HOTPLUG=n and CONFIG_SMP=y . So much so that I no longer have access to a system that supports mainline kernels built with this combination of Kconfig options. This means that I have been putting up with rcutorture output containing :CONFIG_HOTPLUG_CPU: improperly set errors, which is of course annoying, and will soon motivate me to rework the rcutorture test scenarios so as to eliminate this false positive. A side effect of this expected change is that rcutorture will no longer even try to test SMP kernels built without CPU hotplug.

Why prohibit this combination of Kconfig options? It turns out that some of the defenses against hardware side-channel attacks rely on CPU hotplug, so the CPU families vulnerable to such attacks are ensuring that CPU hotplug is available on all systems having at least two CPUs. Security is great, thus so far so good!

Unfortunately, this is a problem for you if you use a CPU family that permits CONFIG_CPU_HOTPLUG=n and CONFIG_SMP=y and you actually need to build kernels this way. Please keep in mind that there really have been RCU bugs that only manifest in such kernels. Given that I no longer have the means to test for these bugs, Murphy asserts that such bugs will quietly but fatally accumulate.

So what are your options? Here are a few:

Rework your CPU family's Kconfig options to force CONFIG_CPU_HOTPLUG=y in any kernel build that enables CONFIG_SMP=y . Start running rcutorture on your hardware frequently enough to catch any bugs that might find their way into CONFIG_CPU_HOTPLUG=n and CONFIG_SMP=y configurations. I am happy to help you get started with this, which will require updating the rcutorture scripting to support your CPU family, defining additional rcutorture scenarios, and having someone (not me!) do the actual rcutorture runs on your hardware on a regular basis. Just ignore the problem in the fond hope that no such bugs will ever appear.