linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] slub: avoid scanning all partial slabs in get

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <347b870e-a7d5-45df-84ba-4eee37b74ff6@linux.dev>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2024 13:00:13 +0800
From: Chengming Zhou <chengming.zhou@...ux.dev>
To: "Christoph Lameter (Ampere)" <cl@...ux.com>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
 Jianfeng Wang <jianfeng.w.wang@...cle.com>, penberg@...nel.org,
 iamjoonsoo.kim@....com, akpm@...ux-foundation.org, roman.gushchin@...ux.dev,
 42.hyeyoo@...il.com, linux-mm@...ck.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
 Chengming Zhou <zhouchengming@...edance.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] slub: avoid scanning all partial slabs in get_slabinfo()

On 2024/2/23 11:50, Christoph Lameter (Ampere) wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Feb 2024, Chengming Zhou wrote:
> 
>>> Can we guestimate the free objects based on the number of partial slabs. That number is available.
>>
>> Yeah, the number of partial slabs is easy to know, but I can't think of a way to
>> estimate the free objects, since __slab_free() is just double cmpxchg in most cases.
> 
> Well a starting point may be half the objects possible in a slab page?

Yeah, also a choice.

> 
> 
>>> How accurate need the accounting be? We also have fuzzy accounting in the VM counters.
>>
>> Maybe not need to be very accurate, some delay/fuzzy should be acceptable.
>>
>> Another direction I think is that we don't distinguish slabs on cpu partial list or
>> slabs on node partial list anymore (different with current behavior).
>>
>> Now we have three scopes:
>> 1. SL_ALL: include all slabs
>> 2. SL_PARTIAL: only include partial slabs on node
>> 3. SL_CPU: only include partail slabs on cpu and the using cpu slab
>>
>> If we change SL_PARTIAL to mean all partial slabs, it maybe simpler.
> 
> Thats not going to work since you would have to scan multiple lists instead of a single list.

We have to use percpu counters if we go this way.

> 
> Another approach may be to come up with some way to scan the partial lists without taking locks. That actually would improve the performance of the allocator. It may work with a single linked lists and RCU.
> 

I think this is a better direction! We can use RCU list if slab can be freed by RCU.