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* Increase slab redzone to 64bitsDavid Woodhouse2007-05-08
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | There are two problems with the existing redzone implementation. Firstly, it's causing misalignment of structures which contain a 64-bit integer, such as netfilter's 'struct ipt_entry' -- causing netfilter modules to fail to load because of the misalignment. (In particular, the first check in net/ipv4/netfilter/ip_tables.c::check_entry_size_and_hooks()) On ppc32 and sparc32, amongst others, __alignof__(uint64_t) == 8. With slab debugging, we use 32-bit redzones. And allocated slab objects aren't sufficiently aligned to hold a structure containing a uint64_t. By _just_ setting ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN to __alignof__(u64) we'd disable redzone checks on those architectures. By using 64-bit redzones we avoid that loss of debugging, and also fix the other problem while we're at it. When investigating this, I noticed that on 64-bit platforms we're using a 32-bit value of RED_ACTIVE/RED_INACTIVE in the 64-bit memory location set aside for the redzone. Which means that the four bytes immediately before or after the allocated object at 0x00,0x00,0x00,0x00 for LE and BE machines, respectively. Which is probably not the most useful choice of poison value. One way to fix both of those at once is just to switch to 64-bit redzones in all cases. Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org> Acked-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi> Cc: Christoph Lameter <clameter@engr.sgi.com> Acked-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
* SLUB coreChristoph Lameter2007-05-07
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns with the existing implementation. A. Management of object queues A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of queueing them up. B. Storage overhead of object queues SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up for storing references to objects for those queues This does not include the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues. C. SLAB meta data overhead SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over. SLAB cannot do this. D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs. E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects from one node and then will switch to the next. F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to decrease fragmentation. G. Tunables SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the better SLUB will be scaling. G. Slab merging We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying slub_nomerge on boot up. Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those. H. Diagnostics The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths). SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option. Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running with the usual performance and it is much more likely that race conditions can be reproduced. I. Resiliency If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the system to continue. J. Tracing Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache and dump the object contents on free. K. On demand DMA cache creation. Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with __GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed. For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is completely eliminated. L. Performance increase Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may enable further performance increases. Tested on: i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator SLUB Boot options slub_nomerge Disable merging of slabs slub_min_order=x Require a minimum order for slab caches. This increases the managed chunk size and therefore reduces meta data and locking overhead. slub_min_objects=x Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8. slub_max_order=x Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified. slub_debug Enable all diagnostics for all caches slub_debug=<options> Enable selective options for all caches slub_debug=<o>,<cache> Enable selective options for a certain set of caches Available Debug options F Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency R Red zoning P Object / padding poisoning U Track last free / alloc T Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs). To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab allocator. [hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes] Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
* [PATCH] x86: tighten kernel image page access rightsJan Beulich2007-05-02
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | On x86-64, kernel memory freed after init can be entirely unmapped instead of just getting 'poisoned' by overwriting with a debug pattern. On i386 and x86-64 (under CONFIG_DEBUG_RODATA), kernel text and bug table can also be write-protected. Compared to the first version, this one prevents re-creating deleted mappings in the kernel image range on x86-64, if those got removed previously. This, together with the original changes, prevents temporarily having inconsistent mappings when cacheability attributes are being changed on such pages (e.g. from AGP code). While on i386 such duplicate mappings don't exist, the same change is done there, too, both for consistency and because checking pte_present() before using various other pte_XXX functions is a requirement anyway. At once, i386 code gets adjusted to use pte_huge() instead of open coding this. AK: split out cpa() changes Signed-off-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@novell.com> Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@suse.de>
* [ATM]: add+use poison definesRandy Dunlap2006-07-03
| | | | | | | ATM: add and use POISON define values. Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
* [NET]: add+use poison definesRandy Dunlap2006-07-03
| | | | | | | Add and use poison defines in net/. Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
* [PATCH] poison: add & use more constantsRandy Dunlap2006-06-27
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Add more poison values to include/linux/poison.h. It's not clear to me whether some others should be added or not, so I haven't added any of these: ./include/linux/libata.h:#define ATA_TAG_POISON 0xfafbfcfdU ./arch/ppc/8260_io/fcc_enet.c:1918: memset((char *)(&(immap->im_dprambase[(mem_addr+64)])), 0x88, 32); ./drivers/usb/mon/mon_text.c:429: memset(mem, 0xe5, sizeof(struct mon_event_text)); ./drivers/char/ftape/lowlevel/ftape-ctl.c:738: memset(ft_buffer[i]->address, 0xAA, FT_BUFF_SIZE); ./drivers/block/sx8.c:/* 0xf is just arbitrary, non-zero noise; this is sorta like poisoning */ Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
* [PATCH] update two drivers for poison.hRandy Dunlap2006-06-27
| | | | | | | | Update two drivers to use poison.h. Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
* [PATCH] add poison.h and patch primary usersRandy Dunlap2006-06-27
Localize poison values into one header file for better documentation and easier/quicker debugging and so that the same values won't be used for multiple purposes. Use these constants in core arch., mm, driver, and fs code. Signed-off-by: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@xenotime.net> Acked-by: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> Cc: Paul Mackerras <paulus@samba.org> Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> Cc: "David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>