linux/kernel/sys.c, branch v2.6.20

[PATCH] notifiers: fix blocking_notifier_call_chain() scalability

2007-01-23T19:08:03Z

while lock-profiling the -rt kernel i noticed weird contention during mmap-intense workloads, and the tracer showed the following gem, in one of our MM hotpaths: threaded-2771 1.... 65us : sys_munmap (sysenter_do_call) threaded-2771 1.... 66us : profile_munmap (sys_munmap) threaded-2771 1.... 66us : blocking_notifier_call_chain (profile_munmap) threaded-2771 1.... 66us : rt_down_read (blocking_notifier_call_chain) ouch! a global rw-semaphore taken in one of the most performance- sensitive codepaths of the kernel. And i dont even have oprofile enabled! All distro kernels have CONFIG_PROFILING enabled, so this scalability problem affects the majority of Linux users. The fix is to enhance blocking_notifier_call_chain() to only take the lock if there appears to be work on the call-chain. With this patch applied i get nicely saturated system, and much higher munmap performance, on SMP systems. And as a bonus this also fixes a similar scalability bottleneck in the thread-exit codepath: profile_task_exit() ... Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra Acked-by: Nick Piggin Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] sys_setpgid: eliminate unnecessary do_each_task_pid(PIDTYPE_PGID)

2006-12-08T16:28:52Z

All tasks in the process group have the same sid, we don't need to iterate them all to check that the caller of sys_setpgid() doesn't change its session. Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] add process_session() helper routine

2006-12-08T16:28:51Z

Replace occurences of task->signal->session by a new process_session() helper routine. It will be useful for pid namespaces to abstract the session pid number. Signed-off-by: Cedric Le Goater Cc: Kirill Korotaev Cc: Eric W. Biederman Cc: Herbert Poetzl Cc: Sukadev Bhattiprolu Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] tty: ->signal->tty locking

2006-12-08T16:28:38Z

Fix the locking of signal->tty. Use ->sighand->siglock to protect ->signal->tty; this lock is already used by most other members of ->signal/->sighand. And unless we are 'current' or the tasklist_lock is held we need ->siglock to access ->signal anyway. (NOTE: sys_unshare() is broken wrt ->sighand locking rules) Note that tty_mutex is held over tty destruction, so while holding tty_mutex any tty pointer remains valid. Otherwise the lifetime of ttys are governed by their open file handles. This leaves some holes for tty access from signal->tty (or any other non file related tty access). It solves the tty SLAB scribbles we were seeing. (NOTE: the change from group_send_sig_info to __group_send_sig_info needs to be examined by someone familiar with the security framework, I think it is safe given the SEND_SIG_PRIV from other __group_send_sig_info invocations) [schwidefsky@de.ibm.com: 3270 fix] [akpm@osdl.org: various post-viro fixes] Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra Acked-by: Alan Cox Cc: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Prarit Bhargava Cc: Chris Wright Cc: Roland McGrath Cc: Stephen Smalley Cc: James Morris Cc: "David S. Miller" Cc: Jeff Dike Cc: Martin Schwidefsky Cc: Jan Kara Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] sys: remove unused variable

2006-12-07T16:39:44Z

Remove unused 'new_ruid' variable. Reported by David Binderman . Signed-off-by: David Rientjes Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

WorkStruct: Pass the work_struct pointer instead of context data

2006-11-22T14:55:48Z

Pass the work_struct pointer to the work function rather than context data. The work function can use container_of() to work out the data. For the cases where the container of the work_struct may go away the moment the pending bit is cleared, it is made possible to defer the release of the structure by deferring the clearing of the pending bit. To make this work, an extra flag is introduced into the management side of the work_struct. This governs auto-release of the structure upon execution. Ordinarily, the work queue executor would release the work_struct for further scheduling or deallocation by clearing the pending bit prior to jumping to the work function. This means that, unless the driver makes some guarantee itself that the work_struct won't go away, the work function may not access anything else in the work_struct or its container lest they be deallocated.. This is a problem if the auxiliary data is taken away (as done by the last patch). However, if the pending bit is *not* cleared before jumping to the work function, then the work function *may* access the work_struct and its container with no problems. But then the work function must itself release the work_struct by calling work_release(). In most cases, automatic release is fine, so this is the default. Special initiators exist for the non-auto-release case (ending in _NAR). Signed-Off-By: David Howells

[PATCH] SRCU: report out-of-memory errors

2006-10-04T14:55:30Z

Currently the init_srcu_struct() routine has no way to report out-of-memory errors. This patch (as761) makes it return -ENOMEM when the per-cpu data allocation fails. The patch also makes srcu_init_notifier_head() report a BUG if a notifier head can't be initialized. Perhaps it should return -ENOMEM instead, but in the most likely cases where this might occur I don't think any recovery is possible. Notifier chains generally are not created dynamically. [akpm@osdl.org: avoid statement-with-side-effect in macro] Signed-off-by: Alan Stern Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Add SRCU-based notifier chains

2006-10-04T14:55:30Z

This patch (as751) adds a new type of notifier chain, based on the SRCU (Sleepable Read-Copy Update) primitives recently added to the kernel. An SRCU notifier chain is much like a blocking notifier chain, in that it must be called in process context and its callout routines are allowed to sleep. The difference is that the chain's links are protected by the SRCU mechanism rather than by an rw-semaphore, so calling the chain has extremely low overhead: no memory barriers and no cache-line bouncing. On the other hand, unregistering from the chain is expensive and the chain head requires special runtime initialization (plus cleanup if it is to be deallocated). SRCU notifiers are appropriate for notifiers that will be called very frequently and for which unregistration occurs very seldom. The proposed "task notifier" scheme qualifies, as may some of the network notifiers. Signed-off-by: Alan Stern Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney Acked-by: Chandra Seetharaman Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] replace cad_pid by a struct pid

2006-10-02T14:57:25Z

There are a few places in the kernel where the init task is signaled. The ctrl+alt+del sequence is one them. It kills a task, usually init, using a cached pid (cad_pid). This patch replaces the pid_t by a struct pid to avoid pid wrap around problem. The struct pid is initialized at boot time in init() and can be modified through systctl with /proc/sys/kernel/cad_pid [ I haven't found any distro using it ? ] It also introduces a small helper routine kill_cad_pid() which is used where it seemed ok to use cad_pid instead of pid 1. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups, build fix] Signed-off-by: Cedric Le Goater Cc: Eric W. Biederman Cc: Martin Schwidefsky Cc: Paul Mackerras Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] namespaces: utsname: switch to using uts namespaces

2006-10-02T14:57:21Z

Replace references to system_utsname to the per-process uts namespace where appropriate. This includes things like uname. Changes: Per Eric Biederman's comments, use the per-process uts namespace for ELF_PLATFORM, sunrpc, and parts of net/ipv4/ipconfig.c [jdike@addtoit.com: UML fix] [clg@fr.ibm.com: cleanup] [akpm@osdl.org: build fix] Signed-off-by: Serge E. Hallyn Cc: Kirill Korotaev Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" Cc: Herbert Poetzl Cc: Andrey Savochkin Signed-off-by: Cedric Le Goater Cc: Jeff Dike Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds