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Revision 1.3, Wed Sep 12 17:09:56 2007 UTC (10 years, 1 month ago) by tes.longdrop.melbourne.sgi.com
Branch: MAIN
Changes since 1.2: +92 -49 lines

Update 2.6.x-xfs to 2.6.23-rc4.

Also update fs/xfs with external mainline changes.
There were 12 such missing commits that I detected:

--------
commit ad690ef9e690f6c31f7d310b09ef1314bcec9033
Author: Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk>
    xfs ioctl __user annotations

commit 20c2df83d25c6a95affe6157a4c9cac4cf5ffaac
Author: Paul Mundt <lethal@linux-sh.org>
    mm: Remove slab destructors from kmem_cache_create().

commit d0217ac04ca6591841e5665f518e38064f4e65bd
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
    mm: fault feedback #1

commit 54cb8821de07f2ffcd28c380ce9b93d5784b40d7
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
    mm: merge populate and nopage into fault (fixes nonlinear)

commit d00806b183152af6d24f46f0c33f14162ca1262a
Author: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
    mm: fix fault vs invalidate race for linear mappings

commit a569425512253992cc64ebf8b6d00a62f986db3e
Author: Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>
    knfsd: exportfs: add exportfs.h header

commit 831441862956fffa17b9801db37e6ea1650b0f69
Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
    Freezer: make kernel threads nonfreezable by default

commit 8e1f936b73150f5095448a0fee6d4f30a1f9001d
Author: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
    mm: clean up and kernelify shrinker registration

commit 5ffc4ef45b3b0a57872f631b4e4ceb8ace0d7496
Author: Jens Axboe <jens.axboe@oracle.com>
    sendfile: remove .sendfile from filesystems that use generic_file_sendfile()

commit 8bb7844286fb8c9fce6f65d8288aeb09d03a5e0d
Author: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
    Add suspend-related notifications for CPU hotplug

commit 59c51591a0ac7568824f541f57de967e88adaa07
Author: Michael Opdenacker <michael@free-electrons.com>
    Fix occurrences of "the the "

commit 0ceb331433e8aad9c5f441a965d7c681f8b9046f
Author: Dmitriy Monakhov <dmonakhov@openvz.org>
    mm: move common segment checks to separate helper function
--------
Merge of 2.6.x-xfs-melb:linux:29656b by kenmcd.

Short users guide for SLUB
--------------------------

The basic philosophy of SLUB is very different from SLAB. SLAB
requires rebuilding the kernel to activate debug options for all
slab caches. SLUB always includes full debugging but it is off by default.
SLUB can enable debugging only for selected slabs in order to avoid
an impact on overall system performance which may make a bug more
difficult to find.

In order to switch debugging on one can add a option "slub_debug"
to the kernel command line. That will enable full debugging for
all slabs.

Typically one would then use the "slabinfo" command to get statistical
data and perform operation on the slabs. By default slabinfo only lists
slabs that have data in them. See "slabinfo -h" for more options when
running the command. slabinfo can be compiled with

gcc -o slabinfo Documentation/vm/slabinfo.c

Some of the modes of operation of slabinfo require that slub debugging
be enabled on the command line. F.e. no tracking information will be
available without debugging on and validation can only partially
be performed if debugging was not switched on.

Some more sophisticated uses of slub_debug:
-------------------------------------------

Parameters may be given to slub_debug. If none is specified then full
debugging is enabled. Format:

slub_debug=<Debug-Options>       Enable options for all slabs
slub_debug=<Debug-Options>,<slab name>
				Enable options only for select slabs

Possible debug options are
	F		Sanity checks on (enables SLAB_DEBUG_FREE. Sorry
			SLAB legacy issues)
	Z		Red zoning
	P		Poisoning (object and padding)
	U		User tracking (free and alloc)
	T		Trace (please only use on single slabs)
	-		Switch all debugging off (useful if the kernel is
			configured with CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG_ON)

F.e. in order to boot just with sanity checks and red zoning one would specify:

	slub_debug=FZ

Trying to find an issue in the dentry cache? Try

	slub_debug=,dentry_cache

to only enable debugging on the dentry cache.

Red zoning and tracking may realign the slab.  We can just apply sanity checks
to the dentry cache with

	slub_debug=F,dentry_cache

In case you forgot to enable debugging on the kernel command line: It is
possible to enable debugging manually when the kernel is up. Look at the
contents of:

/sys/slab/<slab name>/

Look at the writable files. Writing 1 to them will enable the
corresponding debug option. All options can be set on a slab that does
not contain objects. If the slab already contains objects then sanity checks
and tracing may only be enabled. The other options may cause the realignment
of objects.

Careful with tracing: It may spew out lots of information and never stop if
used on the wrong slab.

Slab merging
------------

If no debug options are specified then SLUB may merge similar slabs together
in order to reduce overhead and increase cache hotness of objects.
slabinfo -a displays which slabs were merged together.

Slab validation
---------------

SLUB can validate all object if the kernel was booted with slub_debug. In
order to do so you must have the slabinfo tool. Then you can do

slabinfo -v

which will test all objects. Output will be generated to the syslog.

This also works in a more limited way if boot was without slab debug.
In that case slabinfo -v simply tests all reachable objects. Usually
these are in the cpu slabs and the partial slabs. Full slabs are not
tracked by SLUB in a non debug situation.

Getting more performance
------------------------

To some degree SLUB's performance is limited by the need to take the
list_lock once in a while to deal with partial slabs. That overhead is
governed by the order of the allocation for each slab. The allocations
can be influenced by kernel parameters:

slub_min_objects=x		(default 4)
slub_min_order=x		(default 0)
slub_max_order=x		(default 1)

slub_min_objects allows to specify how many objects must at least fit
into one slab in order for the allocation order to be acceptable.
In general slub will be able to perform this number of allocations
on a slab without consulting centralized resources (list_lock) where
contention may occur.

slub_min_order specifies a minim order of slabs. A similar effect like
slub_min_objects.

slub_max_order specified the order at which slub_min_objects should no
longer be checked. This is useful to avoid SLUB trying to generate
super large order pages to fit slub_min_objects of a slab cache with
large object sizes into one high order page.

SLUB Debug output
-----------------

Here is a sample of slub debug output:

====================================================================
BUG kmalloc-8: Redzone overwritten
--------------------------------------------------------------------

INFO: 0xc90f6d28-0xc90f6d2b. First byte 0x00 instead of 0xcc
INFO: Slab 0xc528c530 flags=0x400000c3 inuse=61 fp=0xc90f6d58
INFO: Object 0xc90f6d20 @offset=3360 fp=0xc90f6d58
INFO: Allocated in get_modalias+0x61/0xf5 age=53 cpu=1 pid=554

Bytes b4 0xc90f6d10:  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a ........ZZZZZZZZ
  Object 0xc90f6d20:  31 30 31 39 2e 30 30 35                         1019.005
 Redzone 0xc90f6d28:  00 cc cc cc                                     .
 Padding 0xc90f6d50:  5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a                         ZZZZZZZZ

  [<c010523d>] dump_trace+0x63/0x1eb
  [<c01053df>] show_trace_log_lvl+0x1a/0x2f
  [<c010601d>] show_trace+0x12/0x14
  [<c0106035>] dump_stack+0x16/0x18
  [<c017e0fa>] object_err+0x143/0x14b
  [<c017e2cc>] check_object+0x66/0x234
  [<c017eb43>] __slab_free+0x239/0x384
  [<c017f446>] kfree+0xa6/0xc6
  [<c02e2335>] get_modalias+0xb9/0xf5
  [<c02e23b7>] dmi_dev_uevent+0x27/0x3c
  [<c027866a>] dev_uevent+0x1ad/0x1da
  [<c0205024>] kobject_uevent_env+0x20a/0x45b
  [<c020527f>] kobject_uevent+0xa/0xf
  [<c02779f1>] store_uevent+0x4f/0x58
  [<c027758e>] dev_attr_store+0x29/0x2f
  [<c01bec4f>] sysfs_write_file+0x16e/0x19c
  [<c0183ba7>] vfs_write+0xd1/0x15a
  [<c01841d7>] sys_write+0x3d/0x72
  [<c0104112>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x99
  [<b7f7b410>] 0xb7f7b410
  =======================

FIX kmalloc-8: Restoring Redzone 0xc90f6d28-0xc90f6d2b=0xcc

If SLUB encounters a corrupted object (full detection requires the kernel
to be booted with slub_debug) then the following output will be dumped
into the syslog:

1. Description of the problem encountered

This will be a message in the system log starting with

===============================================
BUG <slab cache affected>: <What went wrong>
-----------------------------------------------

INFO: <corruption start>-<corruption_end> <more info>
INFO: Slab <address> <slab information>
INFO: Object <address> <object information>
INFO: Allocated in <kernel function> age=<jiffies since alloc> cpu=<allocated by
	cpu> pid=<pid of the process>
INFO: Freed in <kernel function> age=<jiffies since free> cpu=<freed by cpu>
	 pid=<pid of the process>

(Object allocation / free information is only available if SLAB_STORE_USER is
set for the slab. slub_debug sets that option)

2. The object contents if an object was involved.

Various types of lines can follow the BUG SLUB line:

Bytes b4 <address> : <bytes>
	Shows a few bytes before the object where the problem was detected.
	Can be useful if the corruption does not stop with the start of the
	object.

Object <address> : <bytes>
	The bytes of the object. If the object is inactive then the bytes
	typically contain poison values. Any non-poison value shows a
	corruption by a write after free.

Redzone <address> : <bytes>
	The Redzone following the object. The Redzone is used to detect
	writes after the object. All bytes should always have the same
	value. If there is any deviation then it is due to a write after
	the object boundary.

	(Redzone information is only available if SLAB_RED_ZONE is set.
	slub_debug sets that option)

Padding <address> : <bytes>
	Unused data to fill up the space in order to get the next object
	properly aligned. In the debug case we make sure that there are
	at least 4 bytes of padding. This allows the detection of writes
	before the object.

3. A stackdump

The stackdump describes the location where the error was detected. The cause
of the corruption is may be more likely found by looking at the function that
allocated or freed the object.

4. Report on how the problem was dealt with in order to ensure the continued
operation of the system.

These are messages in the system log beginning with

FIX <slab cache affected>: <corrective action taken>

In the above sample SLUB found that the Redzone of an active object has
been overwritten. Here a string of 8 characters was written into a slab that
has the length of 8 characters. However, a 8 character string needs a
terminating 0. That zero has overwritten the first byte of the Redzone field.
After reporting the details of the issue encountered the FIX SLUB message
tell us that SLUB has restored the Redzone to its proper value and then
system operations continue.

Emergency operations:
---------------------

Minimal debugging (sanity checks alone) can be enabled by booting with

	slub_debug=F

This will be generally be enough to enable the resiliency features of slub
which will keep the system running even if a bad kernel component will
keep corrupting objects. This may be important for production systems.
Performance will be impacted by the sanity checks and there will be a
continual stream of error messages to the syslog but no additional memory
will be used (unlike full debugging).

No guarantees. The kernel component still needs to be fixed. Performance
may be optimized further by locating the slab that experiences corruption
and enabling debugging only for that cache

I.e.

	slub_debug=F,dentry

If the corruption occurs by writing after the end of the object then it
may be advisable to enable a Redzone to avoid corrupting the beginning
of other objects.

	slub_debug=FZ,dentry

Christoph Lameter, <clameter@sgi.com>, May 30, 2007