Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] arm64: Expand the stack trace feature to support IRQ stack

From: James Morse
Date: Thu Oct 15 2015 - 12:00:00 EST


On 14/10/15 13:12, Jungseok Lee wrote:
> On Oct 14, 2015, at 12:00 AM, Jungseok Lee wrote:
>> On Oct 13, 2015, at 8:00 PM, James Morse wrote:
>>> On 12/10/15 23:13, Jungseok Lee wrote:
>>>> On Oct 13, 2015, at 1:34 AM, James Morse wrote:
>>>>> Having two kmem_caches for 16K stacks on a 64K page system may be wasteful
>>>>> (especially for systems with few cpus)…
>>>>
>>>> This would be a single concern. To address this issue, I drop the 'static'
>>>> keyword in thread_info_cache. Please refer to the below hunk.
>>>
>>> Its only a problem on systems with 64K pages, which don't have a multiple
>>> of 4 cpus. I suspect if you turn on 64K pages, you have many cores with
>>> plenty of memory…
>>
>> Yes, the problem 'two kmem_caches' comes from only 64K page system.
>>
>> I don't get the statement 'which don't have a multiple of 4 cpus'.
>> Could you point out what I am missing?
>
> You're talking about sl{a|u}b allocator behavior. If so, I got what you meant.

Yes,
With Nx4 cpus, the (currently) 16K irq stacks take up Nx64K - a nice
multiple of pages, so no wasted memory.


>>> If this has been made a published symbol, it should go in a header file.
>>
>> Sure.
>
> I had the wrong impression that there is a room under include/linux/*.

Yes, I see there isn't anywhere obvious to put it...


> IMO, this is architectural option whether arch relies on thread_info_cache or not.
> In other words, it would be clear to put this extern under arch/*/include/asm/*.

Its up to the arch whether or not to define
CONFIG_ARCH_THREAD_INFO_ALLOCATOR. In the case where it hasn't defined it,
and THREAD_SIZE >= PAGE_SIZE, your change is exposing thread_info_cache on
all architectures, so it ought go in a header file accessible to all
architectures.

Something like this, (only build-tested!):
=========%<=========
--- a/include/linux/thread_info.h
+++ b/include/linux/thread_info.h
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@
#include <linux/types.h>
#include <linux/bug.h>

+#include <asm/page.h>
+
struct timespec;
struct compat_timespec;

@@ -145,6 +147,12 @@ static inline bool test_and_clear_restore_sigmask(void)
#error "no set_restore_sigmask() provided and default one won't work"
#endif

+#ifndef CONFIG_ARCH_THREAD_INFO_ALLOCATOR
+#if THREAD_SIZE >= PAGE_SIZE
+extern struct kmem_cache *thread_info_cache;
+#endif /* THREAD_SIZE >= PAGE_SIZE */
+#endif /* CONFIG_ARCH_THREAD_INFO_ALLOCATOR */
+
#endif /* __KERNEL__ */

#endif /* _LINUX_THREAD_INFO_H */
=========%<=========
Quite ugly!

My concern is there could be push-back from the maintainer of
kernel/fork.c, saying "define CONFIG_ARCH_THREAD_INFO_ALLOCATOR if the
generic code isn't what you need", and push-back from the arm64 maintainers
about copy-pasting that chunk into arch/arm64.... both of which are fair,
hence my initial version created a second kmem_cache.


Thanks,

James

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