Commit Graph

513 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
Frederic Weisbecker
fb52607afc tracing/function-return-tracer: change the name into function-graph-tracer
Impact: cleanup

This patch changes the name of the "return function tracer" into
function-graph-tracer which is a more suitable name for a tracing
which makes one able to retrieve the ordered call stack during
the code flow.

Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-11-26 01:59:45 +01:00
Serge Hallyn
18b6e0414e User namespaces: set of cleanups (v2)
The user_ns is moved from nsproxy to user_struct, so that a struct
cred by itself is sufficient to determine access (which it otherwise
would not be).  Corresponding ecryptfs fixes (by David Howells) are
here as well.

Fix refcounting.  The following rules now apply:
        1. The task pins the user struct.
        2. The user struct pins its user namespace.
        3. The user namespace pins the struct user which created it.

User namespaces are cloned during copy_creds().  Unsharing a new user_ns
is no longer possible.  (We could re-add that, but it'll cause code
duplication and doesn't seem useful if PAM doesn't need to clone user
namespaces).

When a user namespace is created, its first user (uid 0) gets empty
keyrings and a clean group_info.

This incorporates a previous patch by David Howells.  Here
is his original patch description:

>I suggest adding the attached incremental patch.  It makes the following
>changes:
>
> (1) Provides a current_user_ns() macro to wrap accesses to current's user
>     namespace.
>
> (2) Fixes eCryptFS.
>
> (3) Renames create_new_userns() to create_user_ns() to be more consistent
>     with the other associated functions and because the 'new' in the name is
>     superfluous.
>
> (4) Moves the argument and permission checks made for CLONE_NEWUSER to the
>     beginning of do_fork() so that they're done prior to making any attempts
>     at allocation.
>
> (5) Calls create_user_ns() after prepare_creds(), and gives it the new creds
>     to fill in rather than have it return the new root user.  I don't imagine
>     the new root user being used for anything other than filling in a cred
>     struct.
>
>     This also permits me to get rid of a get_uid() and a free_uid(), as the
>     reference the creds were holding on the old user_struct can just be
>     transferred to the new namespace's creator pointer.
>
> (6) Makes create_user_ns() reset the UIDs and GIDs of the creds under
>     preparation rather than doing it in copy_creds().
>
>David

>Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>

Changelog:
	Oct 20: integrate dhowells comments
		1. leave thread_keyring alone
		2. use current_user_ns() in set_user()

Signed-off-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
2008-11-24 18:57:41 -05:00
Frederic Weisbecker
65afa5e603 tracing/function-return-tracer: free the return stack on free_task()
Impact: avoid losing some traces when a task is freed

do_exit() is not the last function called when a task finishes.
There are still some functions which are to be called such as
ree_task().  So we delay the freeing of the return stack to the
last moment.

Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-11-23 22:34:02 +01:00
Ingo Molnar
82f60f0bc8 tracing/function-return-tracer: clean up task start/exit callbacks
Impact: cleanup

Eliminate #ifdefs in core code by using empty inline functions.

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-11-23 09:19:35 +01:00
Frederic Weisbecker
f201ae2356 tracing/function-return-tracer: store return stack into task_struct and allocate it dynamically
Impact: use deeper function tracing depth safely

Some tests showed that function return tracing needed a more deeper depth
of function calls. But it could be unsafe to store these return addresses
to the stack.

So these arrays will now be allocated dynamically into task_struct of current
only when the tracer is activated.

Typical scheme when tracer is activated:
- allocate a return stack for each task in global list.
- fork: allocate the return stack for the newly created task
- exit: free return stack of current
- idle init: same as fork

I chose a default depth of 50. I don't have overruns anymore.

Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-11-23 09:17:26 +01:00
Ingo Molnar
9676e73a9e Merge branches 'tracing/ftrace' and 'tracing/urgent' into tracing/core
Conflicts:
	kernel/trace/ftrace.c

[ We conflicted here because we backported a few fixes to
  tracing/urgent - which has different internal APIs. ]
2008-11-19 10:04:25 +01:00
James Morris
f3a5c54701 Merge branch 'master' into next
Conflicts:
	fs/cifs/misc.c

Merge to resolve above, per the patch below.

Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>

diff --cc fs/cifs/misc.c
index ec36410,addd1dc..0000000
--- a/fs/cifs/misc.c
+++ b/fs/cifs/misc.c
@@@ -347,13 -338,13 +338,13 @@@ header_assemble(struct smb_hdr *buffer
  		/*  BB Add support for establishing new tCon and SMB Session  */
  		/*      with userid/password pairs found on the smb session   */
  		/*	for other target tcp/ip addresses 		BB    */
 -				if (current->fsuid != treeCon->ses->linux_uid) {
 +				if (current_fsuid() != treeCon->ses->linux_uid) {
  					cFYI(1, ("Multiuser mode and UID "
  						 "did not match tcon uid"));
- 					read_lock(&GlobalSMBSeslock);
- 					list_for_each(temp_item, &GlobalSMBSessionList) {
- 						ses = list_entry(temp_item, struct cifsSesInfo, cifsSessionList);
+ 					read_lock(&cifs_tcp_ses_lock);
+ 					list_for_each(temp_item, &treeCon->ses->server->smb_ses_list) {
+ 						ses = list_entry(temp_item, struct cifsSesInfo, smb_ses_list);
 -						if (ses->linux_uid == current->fsuid) {
 +						if (ses->linux_uid == current_fsuid()) {
  							if (ses->server == treeCon->ses->server) {
  								cFYI(1, ("found matching uid substitute right smb_uid"));
  								buffer->Uid = ses->Suid;
2008-11-18 18:52:37 +11:00
Mathieu Desnoyers
7e066fb870 tracepoints: add DECLARE_TRACE() and DEFINE_TRACE()
Impact: API *CHANGE*. Must update all tracepoint users.

Add DEFINE_TRACE() to tracepoints to let them declare the tracepoint
structure in a single spot for all the kernel. It helps reducing memory
consumption, especially when declaring a lot of tracepoints, e.g. for
kmalloc tracing.

*API CHANGE WARNING*: now, DECLARE_TRACE() must be used in headers for
tracepoint declarations rather than DEFINE_TRACE(). This is the sane way
to do it. The name previously used was misleading.

Updates scheduler instrumentation to follow this API change.

Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-11-16 09:01:36 +01:00
Linus Torvalds
8141c7f3e7 Move "exit_robust_list" into mm_release()
We don't want to get rid of the futexes just at exit() time, we want to
drop them when doing an execve() too, since that gets rid of the
previous VM image too.

Doing it at mm_release() time means that we automatically always do it
when we disassociate a VM map from the task.

Reported-by: pageexec@freemail.hu
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Brad Spengler <spender@grsecurity.net>
Cc: Alex Efros <powerman@powerman.name>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-11-15 10:20:36 -08:00
David Howells
3b11a1dece CRED: Differentiate objective and effective subjective credentials on a task
Differentiate the objective and real subjective credentials from the effective
subjective credentials on a task by introducing a second credentials pointer
into the task_struct.

task_struct::real_cred then refers to the objective and apparent real
subjective credentials of a task, as perceived by the other tasks in the
system.

task_struct::cred then refers to the effective subjective credentials of a
task, as used by that task when it's actually running.  These are not visible
to the other tasks in the system.

__task_cred(task) then refers to the objective/real credentials of the task in
question.

current_cred() refers to the effective subjective credentials of the current
task.

prepare_creds() uses the objective creds as a base and commit_creds() changes
both pointers in the task_struct (indeed commit_creds() requires them to be the
same).

override_creds() and revert_creds() change the subjective creds pointer only,
and the former returns the old subjective creds.  These are used by NFSD,
faccessat() and do_coredump(), and will by used by CacheFiles.

In SELinux, current_has_perm() is provided as an alternative to
task_has_perm().  This uses the effective subjective context of current,
whereas task_has_perm() uses the objective/real context of the subject.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2008-11-14 10:39:26 +11:00
David Howells
d84f4f992c CRED: Inaugurate COW credentials
Inaugurate copy-on-write credentials management.  This uses RCU to manage the
credentials pointer in the task_struct with respect to accesses by other tasks.
A process may only modify its own credentials, and so does not need locking to
access or modify its own credentials.

A mutex (cred_replace_mutex) is added to the task_struct to control the effect
of PTRACE_ATTACHED on credential calculations, particularly with respect to
execve().

With this patch, the contents of an active credentials struct may not be
changed directly; rather a new set of credentials must be prepared, modified
and committed using something like the following sequence of events:

	struct cred *new = prepare_creds();
	int ret = blah(new);
	if (ret < 0) {
		abort_creds(new);
		return ret;
	}
	return commit_creds(new);

There are some exceptions to this rule: the keyrings pointed to by the active
credentials may be instantiated - keyrings violate the COW rule as managing
COW keyrings is tricky, given that it is possible for a task to directly alter
the keys in a keyring in use by another task.

To help enforce this, various pointers to sets of credentials, such as those in
the task_struct, are declared const.  The purpose of this is compile-time
discouragement of altering credentials through those pointers.  Once a set of
credentials has been made public through one of these pointers, it may not be
modified, except under special circumstances:

  (1) Its reference count may incremented and decremented.

  (2) The keyrings to which it points may be modified, but not replaced.

The only safe way to modify anything else is to create a replacement and commit
using the functions described in Documentation/credentials.txt (which will be
added by a later patch).

This patch and the preceding patches have been tested with the LTP SELinux
testsuite.

This patch makes several logical sets of alteration:

 (1) execve().

     This now prepares and commits credentials in various places in the
     security code rather than altering the current creds directly.

 (2) Temporary credential overrides.

     do_coredump() and sys_faccessat() now prepare their own credentials and
     temporarily override the ones currently on the acting thread, whilst
     preventing interference from other threads by holding cred_replace_mutex
     on the thread being dumped.

     This will be replaced in a future patch by something that hands down the
     credentials directly to the functions being called, rather than altering
     the task's objective credentials.

 (3) LSM interface.

     A number of functions have been changed, added or removed:

     (*) security_capset_check(), ->capset_check()
     (*) security_capset_set(), ->capset_set()

     	 Removed in favour of security_capset().

     (*) security_capset(), ->capset()

     	 New.  This is passed a pointer to the new creds, a pointer to the old
     	 creds and the proposed capability sets.  It should fill in the new
     	 creds or return an error.  All pointers, barring the pointer to the
     	 new creds, are now const.

     (*) security_bprm_apply_creds(), ->bprm_apply_creds()

     	 Changed; now returns a value, which will cause the process to be
     	 killed if it's an error.

     (*) security_task_alloc(), ->task_alloc_security()

     	 Removed in favour of security_prepare_creds().

     (*) security_cred_free(), ->cred_free()

     	 New.  Free security data attached to cred->security.

     (*) security_prepare_creds(), ->cred_prepare()

     	 New. Duplicate any security data attached to cred->security.

     (*) security_commit_creds(), ->cred_commit()

     	 New. Apply any security effects for the upcoming installation of new
     	 security by commit_creds().

     (*) security_task_post_setuid(), ->task_post_setuid()

     	 Removed in favour of security_task_fix_setuid().

     (*) security_task_fix_setuid(), ->task_fix_setuid()

     	 Fix up the proposed new credentials for setuid().  This is used by
     	 cap_set_fix_setuid() to implicitly adjust capabilities in line with
     	 setuid() changes.  Changes are made to the new credentials, rather
     	 than the task itself as in security_task_post_setuid().

     (*) security_task_reparent_to_init(), ->task_reparent_to_init()

     	 Removed.  Instead the task being reparented to init is referred
     	 directly to init's credentials.

	 NOTE!  This results in the loss of some state: SELinux's osid no
	 longer records the sid of the thread that forked it.

     (*) security_key_alloc(), ->key_alloc()
     (*) security_key_permission(), ->key_permission()

     	 Changed.  These now take cred pointers rather than task pointers to
     	 refer to the security context.

 (4) sys_capset().

     This has been simplified and uses less locking.  The LSM functions it
     calls have been merged.

 (5) reparent_to_kthreadd().

     This gives the current thread the same credentials as init by simply using
     commit_thread() to point that way.

 (6) __sigqueue_alloc() and switch_uid()

     __sigqueue_alloc() can't stop the target task from changing its creds
     beneath it, so this function gets a reference to the currently applicable
     user_struct which it then passes into the sigqueue struct it returns if
     successful.

     switch_uid() is now called from commit_creds(), and possibly should be
     folded into that.  commit_creds() should take care of protecting
     __sigqueue_alloc().

 (7) [sg]et[ug]id() and co and [sg]et_current_groups.

     The set functions now all use prepare_creds(), commit_creds() and
     abort_creds() to build and check a new set of credentials before applying
     it.

     security_task_set[ug]id() is called inside the prepared section.  This
     guarantees that nothing else will affect the creds until we've finished.

     The calling of set_dumpable() has been moved into commit_creds().

     Much of the functionality of set_user() has been moved into
     commit_creds().

     The get functions all simply access the data directly.

 (8) security_task_prctl() and cap_task_prctl().

     security_task_prctl() has been modified to return -ENOSYS if it doesn't
     want to handle a function, or otherwise return the return value directly
     rather than through an argument.

     Additionally, cap_task_prctl() now prepares a new set of credentials, even
     if it doesn't end up using it.

 (9) Keyrings.

     A number of changes have been made to the keyrings code:

     (a) switch_uid_keyring(), copy_keys(), exit_keys() and suid_keys() have
     	 all been dropped and built in to the credentials functions directly.
     	 They may want separating out again later.

     (b) key_alloc() and search_process_keyrings() now take a cred pointer
     	 rather than a task pointer to specify the security context.

     (c) copy_creds() gives a new thread within the same thread group a new
     	 thread keyring if its parent had one, otherwise it discards the thread
     	 keyring.

     (d) The authorisation key now points directly to the credentials to extend
     	 the search into rather pointing to the task that carries them.

     (e) Installing thread, process or session keyrings causes a new set of
     	 credentials to be created, even though it's not strictly necessary for
     	 process or session keyrings (they're shared).

(10) Usermode helper.

     The usermode helper code now carries a cred struct pointer in its
     subprocess_info struct instead of a new session keyring pointer.  This set
     of credentials is derived from init_cred and installed on the new process
     after it has been cloned.

     call_usermodehelper_setup() allocates the new credentials and
     call_usermodehelper_freeinfo() discards them if they haven't been used.  A
     special cred function (prepare_usermodeinfo_creds()) is provided
     specifically for call_usermodehelper_setup() to call.

     call_usermodehelper_setkeys() adjusts the credentials to sport the
     supplied keyring as the new session keyring.

(11) SELinux.

     SELinux has a number of changes, in addition to those to support the LSM
     interface changes mentioned above:

     (a) selinux_setprocattr() no longer does its check for whether the
     	 current ptracer can access processes with the new SID inside the lock
     	 that covers getting the ptracer's SID.  Whilst this lock ensures that
     	 the check is done with the ptracer pinned, the result is only valid
     	 until the lock is released, so there's no point doing it inside the
     	 lock.

(12) is_single_threaded().

     This function has been extracted from selinux_setprocattr() and put into
     a file of its own in the lib/ directory as join_session_keyring() now
     wants to use it too.

     The code in SELinux just checked to see whether a task shared mm_structs
     with other tasks (CLONE_VM), but that isn't good enough.  We really want
     to know if they're part of the same thread group (CLONE_THREAD).

(13) nfsd.

     The NFS server daemon now has to use the COW credentials to set the
     credentials it is going to use.  It really needs to pass the credentials
     down to the functions it calls, but it can't do that until other patches
     in this series have been applied.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2008-11-14 10:39:23 +11:00
David Howells
bb952bb98a CRED: Separate per-task-group keyrings from signal_struct
Separate per-task-group keyrings from signal_struct and dangle their anchor
from the cred struct rather than the signal_struct.

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2008-11-14 10:39:20 +11:00
David Howells
f1752eec61 CRED: Detach the credentials from task_struct
Detach the credentials from task_struct, duplicating them in copy_process()
and releasing them in __put_task_struct().

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2008-11-14 10:39:17 +11:00
David Howells
b6dff3ec5e CRED: Separate task security context from task_struct
Separate the task security context from task_struct.  At this point, the
security data is temporarily embedded in the task_struct with two pointers
pointing to it.

Note that the Alpha arch is altered as it refers to (E)UID and (E)GID in
entry.S via asm-offsets.

With comment fixes Signed-off-by: Marc Dionne <marc.c.dionne@gmail.com>

Signed-off-by: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>
Acked-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
Acked-by: Serge Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
2008-11-14 10:39:16 +11:00
Thomas Gleixner
268a3dcfea Merge branch 'timers/range-hrtimers' into v28-range-hrtimers-for-linus-v2
Conflicts:

	kernel/time/tick-sched.c

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
2008-10-22 09:48:06 +02:00
Linus Torvalds
92b29b86fe Merge branch 'tracing-v28-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip
* 'tracing-v28-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip: (131 commits)
  tracing/fastboot: improve help text
  tracing/stacktrace: improve help text
  tracing/fastboot: fix initcalls disposition in bootgraph.pl
  tracing/fastboot: fix bootgraph.pl initcall name regexp
  tracing/fastboot: fix issues and improve output of bootgraph.pl
  tracepoints: synchronize unregister static inline
  tracepoints: tracepoint_synchronize_unregister()
  ftrace: make ftrace_test_p6nop disassembler-friendly
  markers: fix synchronize marker unregister static inline
  tracing/fastboot: add better resolution to initcall debug/tracing
  trace: add build-time check to avoid overrunning hex buffer
  ftrace: fix hex output mode of ftrace
  tracing/fastboot: fix initcalls disposition in bootgraph.pl
  tracing/fastboot: fix printk format typo in boot tracer
  ftrace: return an error when setting a nonexistent tracer
  ftrace: make some tracers reentrant
  ring-buffer: make reentrant
  ring-buffer: move page indexes into page headers
  tracing/fastboot: only trace non-module initcalls
  ftrace: move pc counter in irqtrace
  ...

Manually fix conflicts:
 - init/main.c: initcall tracing
 - kernel/module.c: verbose level vs tracepoints
 - scripts/bootgraph.pl: fallout from cherry-picking commits.
2008-10-20 13:35:07 -07:00
Thomas Gleixner
c465a76af6 Merge branches 'timers/clocksource', 'timers/hrtimers', 'timers/nohz', 'timers/ntp', 'timers/posixtimers' and 'timers/debug' into v28-timers-for-linus 2008-10-20 13:14:06 +02:00
Arjan van de Ven
651dab4264 Merge commit 'linus/master' into merge-linus
Conflicts:

	arch/x86/kvm/i8254.c
2008-10-17 09:20:26 -07:00
Ingo Molnar
b2aaf8f74c Merge branch 'linus' into stackprotector
Conflicts:
	arch/x86/kernel/Makefile
	include/asm-x86/pda.h
2008-10-15 13:46:29 +02:00
Mathieu Desnoyers
0a16b60758 tracing, sched: LTTng instrumentation - scheduler
Instrument the scheduler activity (sched_switch, migration, wakeups,
wait for a task, signal delivery) and process/thread
creation/destruction (fork, exit, kthread stop). Actually, kthread
creation is not instrumented in this patch because it is architecture
dependent. It allows to connect tracers such as ftrace which detects
scheduling latencies, good/bad scheduler decisions. Tools like LTTng can
export this scheduler information along with instrumentation of the rest
of the kernel activity to perform post-mortem analysis on the scheduler
activity.

About the performance impact of tracepoints (which is comparable to
markers), even without immediate values optimizations, tests done by
Hideo Aoki on ia64 show no regression. His test case was using hackbench
on a kernel where scheduler instrumentation (about 5 events in code
scheduler code) was added. See the "Tracepoints" patch header for
performance result detail.

Changelog :

- Change instrumentation location and parameter to match ftrace
  instrumentation, previously done with kernel markers.

[ mingo@elte.hu: conflict resolutions ]
Signed-off-by: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@polymtl.ca>
Acked-by: 'Peter Zijlstra' <peterz@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-10-14 10:30:52 +02:00
Alan Cox
9c9f4ded90 tty: Add a kref count
Introduce a kref to the tty structure and use it to protect the tty->signal
tty references. For now we don't introduce it for anything else.

Signed-off-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2008-10-13 09:51:40 -07:00
Frank Mayhar
bb34d92f64 timers: fix itimer/many thread hang, v2
This is the second resubmission of the posix timer rework patch, posted
a few days ago.

This includes the changes from the previous resubmittion, which addressed
Oleg Nesterov's comments, removing the RCU stuff from the patch and
un-inlining the thread_group_cputime() function for SMP.

In addition, per Ingo Molnar it simplifies the UP code, consolidating much
of it with the SMP version and depending on lower-level SMP/UP handling to
take care of the differences.

It also cleans up some UP compile errors, moves the scheduler stats-related
macros into kernel/sched_stats.h, cleans up a merge error in
kernel/fork.c and has a few other minor fixes and cleanups as suggested
by Oleg and Ingo. Thanks for the review, guys.

Signed-off-by: Frank Mayhar <fmayhar@google.com>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-09-23 13:38:44 +02:00
Ingo Molnar
430b5294bd timers: fix itimer/many thread hang, fix
fix:

 kernel/fork.c:843: error: ‘struct signal_struct’ has no member named ‘sum_sched_runtime’
 kernel/irq/handle.c:117: warning: ‘sparse_irq_lock’ defined but not used

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-09-14 16:40:11 +02:00
Frank Mayhar
f06febc96b timers: fix itimer/many thread hang
Overview

This patch reworks the handling of POSIX CPU timers, including the
ITIMER_PROF, ITIMER_VIRT timers and rlimit handling.  It was put together
with the help of Roland McGrath, the owner and original writer of this code.

The problem we ran into, and the reason for this rework, has to do with using
a profiling timer in a process with a large number of threads.  It appears
that the performance of the old implementation of run_posix_cpu_timers() was
at least O(n*3) (where "n" is the number of threads in a process) or worse.
Everything is fine with an increasing number of threads until the time taken
for that routine to run becomes the same as or greater than the tick time, at
which point things degrade rather quickly.

This patch fixes bug 9906, "Weird hang with NPTL and SIGPROF."

Code Changes

This rework corrects the implementation of run_posix_cpu_timers() to make it
run in constant time for a particular machine.  (Performance may vary between
one machine and another depending upon whether the kernel is built as single-
or multiprocessor and, in the latter case, depending upon the number of
running processors.)  To do this, at each tick we now update fields in
signal_struct as well as task_struct.  The run_posix_cpu_timers() function
uses those fields to make its decisions.

We define a new structure, "task_cputime," to contain user, system and
scheduler times and use these in appropriate places:

struct task_cputime {
	cputime_t utime;
	cputime_t stime;
	unsigned long long sum_exec_runtime;
};

This is included in the structure "thread_group_cputime," which is a new
substructure of signal_struct and which varies for uniprocessor versus
multiprocessor kernels.  For uniprocessor kernels, it uses "task_cputime" as
a simple substructure, while for multiprocessor kernels it is a pointer:

struct thread_group_cputime {
	struct task_cputime totals;
};

struct thread_group_cputime {
	struct task_cputime *totals;
};

We also add a new task_cputime substructure directly to signal_struct, to
cache the earliest expiration of process-wide timers, and task_cputime also
replaces the it_*_expires fields of task_struct (used for earliest expiration
of thread timers).  The "thread_group_cputime" structure contains process-wide
timers that are updated via account_user_time() and friends.  In the non-SMP
case the structure is a simple aggregator; unfortunately in the SMP case that
simplicity was not achievable due to cache-line contention between CPUs (in
one measured case performance was actually _worse_ on a 16-cpu system than
the same test on a 4-cpu system, due to this contention).  For SMP, the
thread_group_cputime counters are maintained as a per-cpu structure allocated
using alloc_percpu().  The timer functions update only the timer field in
the structure corresponding to the running CPU, obtained using per_cpu_ptr().

We define a set of inline functions in sched.h that we use to maintain the
thread_group_cputime structure and hide the differences between UP and SMP
implementations from the rest of the kernel.  The thread_group_cputime_init()
function initializes the thread_group_cputime structure for the given task.
The thread_group_cputime_alloc() is a no-op for UP; for SMP it calls the
out-of-line function thread_group_cputime_alloc_smp() to allocate and fill
in the per-cpu structures and fields.  The thread_group_cputime_free()
function, also a no-op for UP, in SMP frees the per-cpu structures.  The
thread_group_cputime_clone_thread() function (also a UP no-op) for SMP calls
thread_group_cputime_alloc() if the per-cpu structures haven't yet been
allocated.  The thread_group_cputime() function fills the task_cputime
structure it is passed with the contents of the thread_group_cputime fields;
in UP it's that simple but in SMP it must also safely check that tsk->signal
is non-NULL (if it is it just uses the appropriate fields of task_struct) and,
if so, sums the per-cpu values for each online CPU.  Finally, the three
functions account_group_user_time(), account_group_system_time() and
account_group_exec_runtime() are used by timer functions to update the
respective fields of the thread_group_cputime structure.

Non-SMP operation is trivial and will not be mentioned further.

The per-cpu structure is always allocated when a task creates its first new
thread, via a call to thread_group_cputime_clone_thread() from copy_signal().
It is freed at process exit via a call to thread_group_cputime_free() from
cleanup_signal().

All functions that formerly summed utime/stime/sum_sched_runtime values from
from all threads in the thread group now use thread_group_cputime() to
snapshot the values in the thread_group_cputime structure or the values in
the task structure itself if the per-cpu structure hasn't been allocated.

Finally, the code in kernel/posix-cpu-timers.c has changed quite a bit.
The run_posix_cpu_timers() function has been split into a fast path and a
slow path; the former safely checks whether there are any expired thread
timers and, if not, just returns, while the slow path does the heavy lifting.
With the dedicated thread group fields, timers are no longer "rebalanced" and
the process_timer_rebalance() function and related code has gone away.  All
summing loops are gone and all code that used them now uses the
thread_group_cputime() inline.  When process-wide timers are set, the new
task_cputime structure in signal_struct is used to cache the earliest
expiration; this is checked in the fast path.

Performance

The fix appears not to add significant overhead to existing operations.  It
generally performs the same as the current code except in two cases, one in
which it performs slightly worse (Case 5 below) and one in which it performs
very significantly better (Case 2 below).  Overall it's a wash except in those
two cases.

I've since done somewhat more involved testing on a dual-core Opteron system.

Case 1: With no itimer running, for a test with 100,000 threads, the fixed
	kernel took 1428.5 seconds, 513 seconds more than the unfixed system,
	all of which was spent in the system.  There were twice as many
	voluntary context switches with the fix as without it.

Case 2: With an itimer running at .01 second ticks and 4000 threads (the most
	an unmodified kernel can handle), the fixed kernel ran the test in
	eight percent of the time (5.8 seconds as opposed to 70 seconds) and
	had better tick accuracy (.012 seconds per tick as opposed to .023
	seconds per tick).

Case 3: A 4000-thread test with an initial timer tick of .01 second and an
	interval of 10,000 seconds (i.e. a timer that ticks only once) had
	very nearly the same performance in both cases:  6.3 seconds elapsed
	for the fixed kernel versus 5.5 seconds for the unfixed kernel.

With fewer threads (eight in these tests), the Case 1 test ran in essentially
the same time on both the modified and unmodified kernels (5.2 seconds versus
5.8 seconds).  The Case 2 test ran in about the same time as well, 5.9 seconds
versus 5.4 seconds but again with much better tick accuracy, .013 seconds per
tick versus .025 seconds per tick for the unmodified kernel.

Since the fix affected the rlimit code, I also tested soft and hard CPU limits.

Case 4: With a hard CPU limit of 20 seconds and eight threads (and an itimer
	running), the modified kernel was very slightly favored in that while
	it killed the process in 19.997 seconds of CPU time (5.002 seconds of
	wall time), only .003 seconds of that was system time, the rest was
	user time.  The unmodified kernel killed the process in 20.001 seconds
	of CPU (5.014 seconds of wall time) of which .016 seconds was system
	time.  Really, though, the results were too close to call.  The results
	were essentially the same with no itimer running.

Case 5: With a soft limit of 20 seconds and a hard limit of 2000 seconds
	(where the hard limit would never be reached) and an itimer running,
	the modified kernel exhibited worse tick accuracy than the unmodified
	kernel: .050 seconds/tick versus .028 seconds/tick.  Otherwise,
	performance was almost indistinguishable.  With no itimer running this
	test exhibited virtually identical behavior and times in both cases.

In times past I did some limited performance testing.  those results are below.

On a four-cpu Opteron system without this fix, a sixteen-thread test executed
in 3569.991 seconds, of which user was 3568.435s and system was 1.556s.  On
the same system with the fix, user and elapsed time were about the same, but
system time dropped to 0.007 seconds.  Performance with eight, four and one
thread were comparable.  Interestingly, the timer ticks with the fix seemed
more accurate:  The sixteen-thread test with the fix received 149543 ticks
for 0.024 seconds per tick, while the same test without the fix received 58720
for 0.061 seconds per tick.  Both cases were configured for an interval of
0.01 seconds.  Again, the other tests were comparable.  Each thread in this
test computed the primes up to 25,000,000.

I also did a test with a large number of threads, 100,000 threads, which is
impossible without the fix.  In this case each thread computed the primes only
up to 10,000 (to make the runtime manageable).  System time dominated, at
1546.968 seconds out of a total 2176.906 seconds (giving a user time of
629.938s).  It received 147651 ticks for 0.015 seconds per tick, still quite
accurate.  There is obviously no comparable test without the fix.

Signed-off-by: Frank Mayhar <fmayhar@google.com>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@redhat.com>
Cc: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2008-09-14 16:25:35 +02:00
Arjan van de Ven
6976675d94 hrtimer: create a "timer_slack" field in the task struct
We want to be able to control the default "rounding" that is used by
select() and poll() and friends. This is a per process property
(so that we can have a "nice" like program to start certain programs with
a looser or stricter rounding) that can be set/get via a prctl().

For this purpose, a field called "timer_slack_ns" is added to the task
struct. In addition, a field called "default_timer_slack"ns" is added
so that tasks easily can temporarily to a more/less accurate slack and then
back to the default.

The default value of the slack is set to 50 usec; this is significantly less
than 2.6.27's average select() and poll() timing error but still allows
the kernel to group timers somewhat to preserve power behavior. Applications
and admins can override this via the prctl()

Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
2008-09-05 21:35:30 -07:00