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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>
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| arch | ||
| block | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| firmware | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| usr | ||
| virt/kvm | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
| REPORTING-BUGS | ||
Linux kernel release 2.6.xx <http://kernel.org/>
These are the release notes for Linux version 2.6. Read them carefully,
as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong.
WHAT IS LINUX?
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by
Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across
the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix,
including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand
loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management,
and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
accompanying COPYING file for more details.
ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN?
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher),
today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and
UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Cell,
IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS,
Xtensa, AVR32 and Renesas M32R architectures.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures
as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the
GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has
also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although
functionality is then obviously somewhat limited.
Linux has also been ported to itself. You can now run the kernel as a
userspace application - this is called UserMode Linux (UML).
DOCUMENTATION:
- There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation
subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the
system: there are much better sources available.
- There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some
drivers for example. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what
is contained in each file. Please read the Changes file, as it
contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
your kernel.
- The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for
kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a
number of formats: PostScript (.ps), PDF, and HTML, among others.
After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", or "make htmldocs"
will render the documentation in the requested format.
INSTALLING the kernel:
- If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and
unpack it:
gzip -cd linux-2.6.XX.tar.gz | tar xvf -
or
bzip2 -dc linux-2.6.XX.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
Replace "XX" with the version number of the latest kernel.
Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
- You can also upgrade between 2.6.xx releases by patching. Patches are
distributed in the traditional gzip and the newer bzip2 format. To
install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the
top level directory of the kernel source (linux-2.6.xx) and execute:
gzip -cd ../patch-2.6.xx.gz | patch -p1
or
bzip2 -dc ../patch-2.6.xx.bz2 | patch -p1
(repeat xx for all versions bigger than the version of your current
source tree, _in_order_) and you should be ok. You may want to remove
the backup files (xxx~ or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no
failed patches (xxx# or xxx.rej). If there are, either you or me has
made a mistake.
Unlike patches for the 2.6.x kernels, patches for the 2.6.x.y kernels
(also known as the -stable kernels) are not incremental but instead apply
directly to the base 2.6.x kernel. Please read
Documentation/applying-patches.txt for more information.
Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any
patches found.
linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux
The first argument in the command above is the location of the
kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
- If you are upgrading between releases using the stable series patches
(for example, patch-2.6.xx.y), note that these "dot-releases" are
not incremental and must be applied to the 2.6.xx base tree. For
example, if your base kernel is 2.6.12 and you want to apply the
2.6.12.3 patch, you do not and indeed must not first apply the
2.6.12.1 and 2.6.12.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel
version 2.6.12.2 and want to jump to 2.6.12.3, you must first
reverse the 2.6.12.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying
the 2.6.12.3 patch.
You can read more on this in Documentation/applying-patches.txt
- Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
cd linux
make mrproper
You should now have the sources correctly installed.
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Compiling and running the 2.6.xx kernels requires up-to-date
versions of various software packages. Consult
Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required
and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using
excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
build or operation.
BUILD directory for the kernel:
When compiling the kernel all output files will per default be
stored together with the kernel source code.
Using the option "make O=output/dir" allow you to specify an alternate
place for the output files (including .config).
Example:
kernel source code: /usr/src/linux-2.6.N
build directory: /home/name/build/kernel
To configure and build the kernel use:
cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.N
make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig
make O=/home/name/build/kernel
sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install
Please note: If the 'O=output/dir' option is used then it must be
used for all invocations of make.
CONFIGURING the kernel:
Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
version. New configuration options are added in each release, and
odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will
only ask you for the answers to new questions.
- Alternate configuration commands are:
"make config" Plain text interface.
"make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
"make xconfig" X windows (Qt) based configuration tool.
"make gconfig" X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool.
"make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of
your existing ./.config file and asking about
new config symbols.
"make silentoldconfig"
Like above, but avoids cluttering the screen
with questions already answered.
"make defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from arch/$ARCH/defconfig.
"make allyesconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'y' as much as possible.
"make allmodconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'm' as much as possible.
"make allnoconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'n' as much as possible.
"make randconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to random values.
The allyesconfig/allmodconfig/allnoconfig/randconfig variants can
also use the environment variable KCONFIG_ALLCONFIG to specify a
filename that contains config options that the user requires to be
set to a specific value. If KCONFIG_ALLCONFIG=filename is not used,
"make *config" checks for a file named "all{yes/mod/no/random}.config"
for symbol values that are to be forced. If this file is not found,
it checks for a file named "all.config" to contain forced values.
NOTES on "make config":
- having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers
- compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386
will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386. The
kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up.
- A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger,
but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
have a math coprocessor or not.
- the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you
should probably answer 'n' to the questions for
"development", "experimental", or "debugging" features.
COMPILING the kernel:
- Make sure you have at least gcc 3.2 available.
For more information, refer to Documentation/Changes.
Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel.
- Do a "make" to create a compressed kernel image. It is also
possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the
kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.
To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal
build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.
- If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you
will also have to do "make modules_install".
- Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is
especially true for the development releases, since each new release
contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a
backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you
are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
do a "make modules_install".
Alternatively, before compiling, use the kernel config option
"LOCALVERSION" to append a unique suffix to the regular kernel version.
LOCALVERSION can be set in the "General Setup" menu.
- In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
image (e.g. .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation)
to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found.
- Booting a kernel directly from a floppy without the assistance of a
bootloader such as LILO, is no longer supported.
If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which
uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf. The
kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
/boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image
and copy the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO
to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot
the new kernel image.
Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo.
You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your
old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not
work. See the LILO docs for more information.
After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system,
reboot, and enjoy!
If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode,
ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or
alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to
recompile the kernel to change these parameters.
- Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy.
IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:
- If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check
the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated
with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there
isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail
them to me (torvalds@linux-foundation.org), and possibly to any other
relevant mailing-list or to the newsgroup.
- In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.
- If the bug results in a message like
unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
Oops: 0002
EIP: 0010:XXXXXXXX
eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx
esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx
ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx
Pid: xx, process nr: xx
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look
incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also
important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information
on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
- If you compiled the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS you can send the dump
as is, otherwise you will have to use the "ksymoops" program to make
sense of the dump (but compiling with CONFIG_KALLSYMS is usually preferred).
This utility can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops/ .
Alternately you can do the dump lookup by hand:
- In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can
look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help
me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
see which kernel function contains the offending address.
To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. This is
the file 'linux/vmlinux'. To extract the namelist and match it against
the EIP from the kernel crash, do:
nm vmlinux | sort | less
This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel
debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
"context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
interesting one.
If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
possible will help. Please read the REPORTING-BUGS document for details.
- Alternately, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you
cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the
kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make
clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config").
After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore".
You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the
point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes
with the EIP value.)
gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly)
disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.