linux/kernel, branch v2.6.16

[PATCH] disable unshare(CLONE_VM) for now

2006-03-18T18:49:36Z

sys_unshare() does mmput(new_mm). This is not enough if we have mm->core_waiters. This patch is a temporary fix for soon to be released 2.6.16. Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov [ Checked with Uli: "I'm not planning to use unshare(CLONE_VM). It's not needed for any functionality planned so far. What we (as in Red Hat) need unshare() for now is the filesystem side." ] Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] posix-timers: fix requeue accounting when signal is ignored

2006-03-17T15:51:25Z

When the posix-timer signal is ignored then the timer is rearmed by the callback function. The requeue pending accounting has to be fixed up else the state might be wrong. Signed-off-by: Roman Zippel Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] time_interpolator: add __read_mostly

2006-03-17T15:51:25Z

The pointer to the current time interpolator and the current list of time interpolators are typically only changed during bootup. Adding __read_mostly takes them away from possibly hot cachelines. Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] unshare: Use rcu_assign_pointer when setting sighand

2006-03-17T15:46:59Z

The sighand pointer only needs the rcu_read_lock on the read side. So only depending on task_lock protection when setting this pointer is not enough. We also need a memory barrier to ensure the initialization is seen first. Use rcu_assign_pointer as it does this for us, and clearly documents that we are setting an rcu readable pointer. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] Fix sigaltstack corruption among cloned threads

2006-03-14T15:57:17Z

This patch fixes alternate signal stack corruption among cloned threads with CLONE_SIGHAND (and CLONE_VM) for linux-2.6.16-rc6. The value of alternate signal stack is currently inherited after a call of clone(... CLONE_SIGHAND | CLONE_VM). But if sigaltstack is set by a parent thread, and then if multiple cloned child threads (+ parent threads) call signal handler at the same time, some threads may be conflicted - because they share to use the same alternative signal stack region. Finally they get sigsegv. It's an undesirable race condition. Note that child threads created from NPTL pthread_create() also hit this conflict when the parent thread uses sigaltstack, without my patch. To fix this problem, this patch clears the child threads' sigaltstack information like exec(). This behavior follows the SUSv3 specification. In SUSv3, pthread_create() says "The alternate stack shall not be inherited (when new threads are initialized)". It means that sigaltstack should be cleared when sigaltstack memory space is shared by cloned threads with CLONE_SIGHAND. Note that I chose "if (clone_flags & CLONE_SIGHAND)" line because: - If clone_flags line is not existed, fork() does not inherit sigaltstack. - CLONE_VM is another choice, but vfork() does not inherit sigaltstack. - CLONE_SIGHAND implies CLONE_VM, and it looks suitable. - CLONE_THREAD is another candidate, and includes CLONE_SIGHAND + CLONE_VM, but this flag has a bit different semantics. I decided to use CLONE_SIGHAND. [ Changed to test for CLONE_VM && !CLONE_VFORK after discussion --Linus ] Signed-off-by: GOTO Masanori Cc: Roland McGrath Cc: Ingo Molnar Acked-by: Linus Torvalds Cc: Ulrich Drepper Cc: Jakub Jelinek Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] remove __put_task_struct_cb export again

2006-03-11T17:19:34Z

The patch '[PATCH] RCU signal handling' [1] added an export for __put_task_struct_cb, a put_task_struct helper newly introduced in that patch. But the put_task_struct couldn't be used modular previously as __put_task_struct wasn't exported. There are not callers of it in modular code, and it shouldn't be exported because we don't want drivers to hold references to task_structs. This patch removes the export and folds __put_task_struct into __put_task_struct_cb as there's no other caller. [1] http://www2.kernel.org/git/gitweb.cgi?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=e56d090310d7625ecb43a1eeebd479f04affb48b Signed-off-by: Christoph Hellwig Acked-by: Paul E. McKenney Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] fix file counting

2006-03-08T22:14:01Z

I have benchmarked this on an x86_64 NUMA system and see no significant performance difference on kernbench. Tested on both x86_64 and powerpc. The way we do file struct accounting is not very suitable for batched freeing. For scalability reasons, file accounting was constructor/destructor based. This meant that nr_files was decremented only when the object was removed from the slab cache. This is susceptible to slab fragmentation. With RCU based file structure, consequent batched freeing and a test program like Serge's, we just speed this up and end up with a very fragmented slab - llm22:~ # cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr 587730 0 758844 At the same time, I see only a 2000+ objects in filp cache. The following patch I fixes this problem. This patch changes the file counting by removing the filp_count_lock. Instead we use a separate percpu counter, nr_files, for now and all accesses to it are through get_nr_files() api. In the sysctl handler for nr_files, we populate files_stat.nr_files before returning to user. Counting files as an when they are created and destroyed (as opposed to inside slab) allows us to correctly count open files with RCU. Signed-off-by: Dipankar Sarma Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" Cc: "David S. Miller" Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] rcu batch tuning

2006-03-08T22:14:01Z

This patch adds new tunables for RCU queue and finished batches. There are two types of controls - number of completed RCU updates invoked in a batch (blimit) and monitoring for high rate of incoming RCUs on a cpu (qhimark, qlowmark). By default, the per-cpu batch limit is set to a small value. If the input RCU rate exceeds the high watermark, we do two things - force quiescent state on all cpus and set the batch limit of the CPU to INTMAX. Setting batch limit to INTMAX forces all finished RCUs to be processed in one shot. If we have more than INTMAX RCUs queued up, then we have bigger problems anyway. Once the incoming queued RCUs fall below the low watermark, the batch limit is set to the default. Signed-off-by: Dipankar Sarma Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" Cc: "David S. Miller" Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] idle threads should have a sane ->timestamp value

2006-03-08T22:14:00Z

Idle threads should have a sane ->timestamp value, to avoid init kernel thread(s) from inheriting it and causing miscalculations in try_to_wake_up(). Reported-by: Mike Galbraith . Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar Cc: Nick Piggin Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

[PATCH] time: add barrier after updating jiffies_64

2006-03-07T02:40:44Z

Add a compiler barrier so that we don't read jiffies before updating jiffies_64. Signed-off-by: Atsushi Nemoto Cc: Ralf Baechle Cc: Paul Mackerras Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds