[tip:core/debugobjects] debugobjects: delay free of internal objects

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Tue Mar 17 2009 - 07:31:23 EST


Commit-ID: 337fff8b5ed0573ea106491c6de47bd7fe623500
Gitweb: http://git.kernel.org/tip/337fff8b5ed0573ea106491c6de47bd7fe623500
Author: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
AuthorDate: Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:04:53 +0100
Commit: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
CommitDate: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:28:30 +0100

debugobjects: delay free of internal objects

Impact: avoid recursive kfree calls, less slab activity on heavy load

debugobjects checks on kfree whether tracked objects are freed. When a
tracked object is freed debugobjects frees the internal reference
object as well. The debug object slab cache is marked to not recurse
into debugobjects when a slab objects is freed, but the recursive call
can be problematic versus locking in the memory allocator.

Defer the freeing of debug slab objects via schedule_work. The reasons
not to use RCU are:

1) rcu makes the data structure larger
2) there is no real need for rcu as nothing references the obj after
we freed it
3) under heavy load it is easier to reuse the to be freed objects instead
of allocating new objects from the slab. This lowered the slab activity
significantly in a heavy load networking test where lots of timers are
created/destroyed. The workqueue based delayed free allows us just to
put the to be freed objects back into the object pool and reuse them
right away.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
LKML-Reference: <200903162049.58058.nickpiggin@xxxxxxxxxxxx>


---
lib/debugobjects.c | 53 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-----------
1 files changed, 41 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lib/debugobjects.c b/lib/debugobjects.c
index fdcda3d..2755a3b 100644
--- a/lib/debugobjects.c
+++ b/lib/debugobjects.c
@@ -50,6 +50,9 @@ static int debug_objects_enabled __read_mostly

static struct debug_obj_descr *descr_test __read_mostly;

+static void free_obj_work(struct work_struct *work);
+static DECLARE_WORK(debug_obj_work, free_obj_work);
+
static int __init enable_object_debug(char *str)
{
debug_objects_enabled = 1;
@@ -154,25 +157,51 @@ alloc_object(void *addr, struct debug_bucket *b, struct debug_obj_descr *descr)
}

/*
- * Put the object back into the pool or give it back to kmem_cache:
+ * workqueue function to free objects.
*/
-static void free_object(struct debug_obj *obj)
+static void free_obj_work(struct work_struct *work)
{
- unsigned long idx = (unsigned long)(obj - obj_static_pool);
+ struct debug_obj *obj;
unsigned long flags;

- if (obj_pool_free < ODEBUG_POOL_SIZE || idx < ODEBUG_POOL_SIZE) {
- spin_lock_irqsave(&pool_lock, flags);
- hlist_add_head(&obj->node, &obj_pool);
- obj_pool_free++;
- obj_pool_used--;
- spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool_lock, flags);
- } else {
- spin_lock_irqsave(&pool_lock, flags);
- obj_pool_used--;
+ spin_lock_irqsave(&pool_lock, flags);
+ while (obj_pool_free > ODEBUG_POOL_SIZE) {
+ obj = hlist_entry(obj_pool.first, typeof(*obj), node);
+ hlist_del(&obj->node);
+ obj_pool_free--;
+ /*
+ * We release pool_lock across kmem_cache_free() to
+ * avoid contention on pool_lock.
+ */
spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool_lock, flags);
kmem_cache_free(obj_cache, obj);
+ spin_lock_irqsave(&pool_lock, flags);
}
+ spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool_lock, flags);
+}
+
+/*
+ * Put the object back into the pool and schedule work to free objects
+ * if necessary.
+ */
+static void free_object(struct debug_obj *obj)
+{
+ unsigned long flags;
+ int sched = 0;
+
+ spin_lock_irqsave(&pool_lock, flags);
+ /*
+ * schedule work when the pool is filled and the cache is
+ * initialized:
+ */
+ if (obj_pool_free > ODEBUG_POOL_SIZE && obj_cache)
+ sched = !work_pending(&debug_obj_work);
+ hlist_add_head(&obj->node, &obj_pool);
+ obj_pool_free++;
+ obj_pool_used--;
+ spin_unlock_irqrestore(&pool_lock, flags);
+ if (sched)
+ schedule_work(&debug_obj_work);
}

/*
--
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