Re: [PATCH] audit: speedup for syscalls when auditing is disabled

From: Michael Neuling
Date: Mon Aug 23 2010 - 22:11:27 EST


In message <1282586177.2681.43.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> you wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-08-20 at 12:13 +1000, Michael Neuling wrote:
> > We found that when auditing is disabled using "auditctl -D", that
> > there's still a significant overhead when doing syscalls. This overhead
> > is not present when a single never rule is inserted using "auditctl -a
> > task,never".
> >
> > Using Anton's null syscall microbenchmark from
> > http://ozlabs.org/~anton/junkcode/null_syscall.c we currently have on a
> > powerpc machine:
> >
> > # auditctl -D
> > No rules
> > # ./null_syscall
> > null_syscall: 739.03 cycles 100.00%
> > # auditctl -a task,never
> > # ./null_syscall
> > null_syscall: 204.63 cycles 100.00%
> >
> > This doesn't seem right, as we'd hope that auditing would have the same
> > minimal impact when disabled via -D as when we have a single never rule.
> >
> > The patch below creates a fast path when initialising a task. If the
> > rules list for tasks is empty (the disabled -D option), we mark auditing
> > as disabled for this task.
> >
> > When this is applied, our null syscall benchmark improves in the
> > disabled case to match the single never rule case.
> >
> > # auditctl -D
> > No rules
> > # ./null_syscall
> > null_syscall: 204.62 cycles 100.00%
> > # auditctl -a task,never
> > # ./null_syscall
> > null_syscall: 204.63 cycles 100.00%
> >
> > Reported-by: Anton Blanchard <anton@xxxxxxxxx>
> > Signed-off-by: Michael Neuling <mikey@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> > I'm not familiar with the auditing code/infrastructure so I may have
> > misunderstood something here
> >
> > diff --git a/kernel/auditsc.c b/kernel/auditsc.c
> > index 1b31c13..1cd6ec7 100644
> > --- a/kernel/auditsc.c
> > +++ b/kernel/auditsc.c
> > @@ -666,6 +666,11 @@ static enum audit_state audit_filter_task(struct task_
struct *tsk, char **key)
> > enum audit_state state;
> >
> > rcu_read_lock();
> > + /* Fast path. If the list is empty, disable auditing */
> > + if (list_empty(&audit_filter_list[AUDIT_FILTER_TASK])) {
> > + rcu_read_unlock();
> > + return AUDIT_DISABLED;
> > + }
> > list_for_each_entry_rcu(e, &audit_filter_list[AUDIT_FILTER_TASK], list)
{
> > if (audit_filter_rules(tsk, &e->rule, NULL, NULL, &state)) {
> > if (state == AUDIT_RECORD_CONTEXT)
>
> I don't think this works at all. I don't see how syscall audit'ing can
> work. What if I have nothing in the AUDIT_FILTER_TASK list but I want
> to audit all 'open(2)' syscalls? This patch is going to leave the task
> in the DISABLED state and we won't ever be able to match on the syscall
> rules.

Sorry my bad. I'm not too familiar with the audit infrastructure.

On reflection, we might have a bug in audit_alloc though. Currently we
have this:

int audit_alloc(struct task_struct *tsk)
{
<snip>
state = audit_filter_task(tsk, &key);
if (likely(state == AUDIT_DISABLED))
return 0;

<snip>
set_tsk_thread_flag(tsk, TIF_SYSCALL_AUDIT);
return 0;
}

This gets called on fork. If we have "task,never" rule, we hit this
state == AUDIT_DISABLED path, return immediately and the tasks
TIF_SYSCALL_AUDIT flags doesn't get set. On powerpc, we check
TIF_SYSCALL_AUDIT in asm on syscall entry to fast path not calling the
syscall audit code.

This seems wrong to me as a "never" _task_ audit rule shouldn't effect
_syscall_ auditing? Is there some interaction between task and syscall
auditing that I'm missing?

> I wonder if you could get much back, in terms of performance, by moving
> the
> context->dummy = !audit_n_rules;
> line to the top and just returning if context->dummy == 1;

We get 668.09 cycles with this optimisation, so it comes down a bit, but
no where near if the auditing is disabled altogether.

Like I said above, powerpc has a fast path in asm on system call entry
to check the thread_info flags for if syscall auditing is disabled. If
it's disabled, we don't call the audit code, hence why it's very fast in
this case.

> I'll play a bit, but I thought that was supposed to be a safe thing to
> do....

Thanks!

Mikey

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