linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/3] lib/stackdepot: Add a refcount field in stack

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Date:   Thu, 1 Sep 2022 12:01:19 +0200
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com>
To:     Marco Elver <elver@...gle.com>
Cc:     Oscar Salvador <osalvador@...e.de>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Eric Dumazet <edumazet@...gle.com>,
        Waiman Long <longman@...hat.com>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        Alexander Potapenko <glider@...gle.com>,
        Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@...il.com>,
        Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>, kasan-dev@...glegroups.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/3] lib/stackdepot: Add a refcount field in stack_record

On Thu 01-09-22 11:18:19, Marco Elver wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Sept 2022 at 10:38, Michal Hocko <mhocko@...e.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu 01-09-22 10:24:58, Marco Elver wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 01, 2022 at 06:42AM +0200, Oscar Salvador wrote:
> > [...]
> > > > diff --git a/lib/stackdepot.c b/lib/stackdepot.c
> > > > index 5ca0d086ef4a..aeb59d3557e2 100644
> > > > --- a/lib/stackdepot.c
> > > > +++ b/lib/stackdepot.c
> > > > @@ -63,6 +63,7 @@ struct stack_record {
> > > >     u32 hash;                       /* Hash in the hastable */
> > > >     u32 size;                       /* Number of frames in the stack */
> > > >     union handle_parts handle;
> > > > +   refcount_t count;               /* Number of the same repeated stacks */
> > >
> > > This will increase stack_record size for every user, even if they don't
> > > care about the count.
> >
> > Couldn't this be used for garbage collection?
> 
> Only if we can precisely figure out at which point a stack is no
> longer going to be needed.
> 
> But more realistically, stack depot was designed to be simple. Right
> now it can allocate new stacks (from an internal pool), but giving the
> memory back to that pool isn't supported. Doing garbage collection
> would effectively be a redesign of stack depot.

Fair argument. 

> And for the purpose
> for which stack depot was designed (debugging tools), memory has never
> been an issue (note that stack depot also has a fixed upper bound on
> memory usage).

Is the increased size really a blocker then? I see how it sucks to
maintain a counter when it is not used by anything but page_owner but
storing that counte externally would just add more complexity AFAICS
(more allocations, more tracking etc.).

Maybe the counter can be conditional on the page_owner which would add
some complexity as well (variable size structure) but at least the
external allocation stuff could be avoided.
-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs