Message-ID: <20090826110013.GA10816@hmsreliant.think-freely.org>
Date:	Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:00:13 -0400
From:	Neil Horman <nhorman@...driver.com>
To:	Bill Fink <billfink@...dspring.com>
Cc:	Linux Network Developers <netdev@...r.kernel.org>, brice@...i.com,
	gallatin@...i.com
Subject: Re: Receive side performance issue with multi-10-GigE and NUMA

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 03:10:57AM -0400, Bill Fink wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, Neil Horman wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 12:14:21AM -0400, Bill Fink wrote:
> > > On Thu, 20 Aug 2009, Neil Horman wrote:
> > > 
> > > > On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 03:50:44AM -0400, Bill Fink wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > > When I tried an actual nuttcp performance test, even when rate limiting
> > > > > to just 1 Mbps, I immediately got a kernel oops.  I tried to get a
> > > > > crashdump via kexec/kdump, but the kexec kernel, instead of just
> > > > > generating a crashdump, fully booted the new kernel, which was
> > > > > extremely sluggish until I rebooted it through a BIOS re-init,
> > > > > and never produced a crashdump.  I tried this several times and
> > > > > an immediate kernel oops was always the result (with either a TCP
> > > > > or UDP test).  A ping test of 1000 9000-byte packets with an interval
> > > > > of 0.001 seconds (which is 72 Mbps for 1 second) on the other hand
> > > > > worked just fine.
> > > > 
> > > > The sluggishness is expected, since the kdump kernel operates out of such
> > > > limited memory.  don't know why you booted to a full system rather than did a
> > > > crash recovery.  Don't suppose you got a backtrace did you?
> > > 
> > > There was a backtrace on the screen but I didn't have a chance to
> > > record it.  BTW did anyone ever think to print the backtrace in
> > > reverse (first to some reserved memory and then output to the display)
> > > so the more interesting parts wouldn't have scrolled off the top of
> > > the screen?
> > > 
> > The real solution is to use a console to which the output doesn't scroll off the
> > screen.  Normally people use a serial console they can log, or a RAC card that
> > they can record. Even on a regular vga monitor in text mode, you can set up the
> > vt iirc to allow for scrolling.
> 
> None of our Asus P6T6 systems have serial consoles.  I don't know of
> any RAC cards for them either, nor are there spare PCI slots available
> in many cases.  I wouldn't think the Shift-PageUp trick would work
> with a crashed kernel, but I admit I didn't try it.  I haven't checked
> out netconsole yet either, but I'm not sure it would help either in a
> case like this that was a network related kernel crash.
> 
Any USB ports that you can attach a serial dongle to?  That would work as well,
or, as previously mentioned, netconsole also does the trick.

> In any case, a simple kernel command line that would provide a reversed
> backtrace would be a simple thing to facilitate Linux users providing
> useful info to Linux kernel developers in helping to debug kernel
> problems.  The most useful info would still be on the screen, so it
> could be transcribed or a photo image of the screen could be taken.
> 
I understand what your saying, I'm just saying there are currently several
options for you that have already solved this problem in differnt ways.

> Fortunately, in this specific case, the SuperMicro X8DAH+-F system
> does have a serial console, and after a fair amount of effort I was
> able to get it to work as desired, and was able to finally capture
> a backtrace of the kernel oops.  BTW I believe the reason the
> kexec/kdump didn't work was probably because it couldn't find
> a /proc/vmcore file, although I don't know why that would be,
> and the Fedora 10 /etc/init.d/kdump script will then just boot
> up normally if it fails to find the /proc/vmcore file (or it's
> zero size).
> 
I take care of kdump for fedora and RHEL.  If you file a bug on this, I'd be
happy to look into it further.

> The following shows a simple ping test usage of the skb_sources
> tracing feature:
> 
> [root@...ntest1 tracing]# numactl --membind=1 taskset -c 4 ping -c 5 -s 1472 192.168.1.10
> PING 192.168.1.10 (192.168.1.10) 1472(1500) bytes of data.
> 1480 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.139 ms
> 1480 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.182 ms
> 1480 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.178 ms
> 1480 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.188 ms
> 1480 bytes from 192.168.1.10: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.178 ms
> 
> --- 192.168.1.10 ping statistics ---
> 5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 3999ms
> rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.139/0.173/0.188/0.017 ms
> 
> [root@...ntest1 tracing]# cat trace
> # tracer: skb_sources
> #
> #       PID     ANID    CNID    IFC     RXQ     CCPU    LEN
> #        |       |       |       |       |       |       |
>         4217    1       1       eth2    0       4       1500
>         4217    1       1       eth2    0       4       1500
>         4217    1       1       eth2    0       4       1500
>         4217    1       1       eth2    0       4       1500
>         4217    1       1       eth2    0       4       1500
> 
> All is as was expected.
> 
> But if I try an actual nuttcp performance test (even rate limited
> to 1 Mbps), I get the following kernel oops:
> 
thank you, I think I see the problem, I'll have a patch for you in just a bit

Thanks
Neil

> [root@...ntest1 tracing]# numactl --membind=1 nuttcp -In2 -Ri1m -xc4/0 192.168.1.10
> BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000038
> IP: [<ffffffff810b01ab>] probe_skb_dequeue+0xf7/0x152
> PGD 337d12067 PUD 337d11067 PMD 0
> Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP
> last sysfs file: /sys/devices/pci0000:80/0000:80:07.0/0000:8b:00.0/0000:8c:04.0e
> CPU 4
> Modules linked in: w83627ehf hwmon_vid coretemp hwmon ipv6 dm_multipath uinput ]
> Pid: 4222, comm: nuttcp Not tainted 2.6.31-rc6-bf #3 X8DAH
> RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff810b01ab>]  [<ffffffff810b01ab>] probe_skb_dequeue+0xf7/0x12
> RSP: 0018:ffff8801a5811a88  EFLAGS: 00010213
> RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff88033906d154 RCX: 000000000000000d
> RDX: 000000000000f88c RSI: 000000000000000b RDI: ffff8803383d3044
> RBP: ffff8801a5811ab8 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: ffff8801ab311a00
> R10: 0000000000000005 R11: ffffc9000080e2b0 R12: ffff880337c45400
> R13: ffff88033906d150 R14: 0000000000000014 R15: ffffffff818bb890
> FS:  00007fa976d326f0(0000) GS:ffffc90000800000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
> CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 000000008005003b
> CR2: 0000000000000038 CR3: 000000033801e000 CR4: 00000000000006e0
> DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
> DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
> Process nuttcp (pid: 4222, threadinfo ffff8801a5810000, task ffff8801ab2e5d00)
> Stack:
>  ffff8801a5811ab8 ffff8801b35d4ab0 0000000000000014 0000000000000000
> <0> 0000000000000014 0000000000000014 ffff8801a5811b18 ffffffff81366ae8
> <0> ffff8801a5811ed8 0000001439084000 ffff880337c45400 00000001001416ef
> Call Trace:
>  [<ffffffff81366ae8>] skb_copy_datagram_iovec+0x50/0x1f5
>  [<ffffffff813ac875>] tcp_rcv_established+0x278/0x6db
>  [<ffffffff813b3ef5>] tcp_v4_do_rcv+0x1b8/0x366
>  [<ffffffff8135f99e>] ? release_sock+0xab/0xb4
>  [<ffffffff8136004d>] ? sk_wait_data+0xc8/0xd6
>  [<ffffffff813a32d6>] tcp_prequeue_process+0x79/0x8f
>  [<ffffffff813a455d>] tcp_recvmsg+0x4e8/0xaa0
>  [<ffffffff8135ec90>] sock_common_recvmsg+0x37/0x4c
>  [<ffffffff8135cb06>] __sock_recvmsg+0x72/0x7f
>  [<ffffffff8135cbdd>] sock_aio_read+0xca/0xda
>  [<ffffffff810d9536>] ? vma_merge+0x2a0/0x318
>  [<ffffffff810f6d4f>] do_sync_read+0xec/0x132
>  [<ffffffff81067ddc>] ? autoremove_wake_function+0x0/0x3d
>  [<ffffffff811b646c>] ? security_file_permission+0x16/0x18
>  [<ffffffff810f785c>] vfs_read+0xc0/0x107
>  [<ffffffff810f7971>] sys_read+0x4c/0x75
>  [<ffffffff81011c82>] system_call_fastpath+0x16/0x1b
> Code: 44 89 73 30 89 43 14 41 0f b7 84 24 ac 00 00 00 89 43 28 65 8b 04 25 98 e
> RIP  [<ffffffff810b01ab>] probe_skb_dequeue+0xf7/0x152
>  RSP <ffff8801a5811a88>
> CR2: 0000000000000038
> 
> 						-Thanks
> 
> 						-Bill
> 
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