Re: 2.6.22-rc2-mm1

On Wed, 23 May 2007 16:36:07 -0700 (PDT) Christoph Lameter wrote:

On Wed, 23 May 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:

A few words in slub.txt, perhaps?

Thanks for the update. A few nits below.

SLUB: More documentation

Update documentation to describe how to read a SLUB error report.
Add slub parameters to Documentation/kernel-parameters.

Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@xxxxxxx>

---
Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt | 37 +++++++++-
Documentation/vm/slub.txt | 133 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
2 files changed, 157 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

Index: slub/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
===================================================================
--- slub.orig/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt 2007-05-23 15:41:58.000000000 -0700
+++ slub/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt 2007-05-23 15:57:07.000000000 -0700
@@ -1610,6 +1610,37 @@ and is between 256 and 4096 characters.

slram= [HW,MTD]

+ slub_debug [MM, SLUB]
+ Enabling slub_debug will allow to determine the culprit

s/will allow/allows/
then
allows _____ (the verb needs an object)
e.g., someone | us | you (clameter@xxxxxxx :)

+ if slab objects become corrupted. Enabling slub_debug
+ creates guard zones around objects and poisons objects
+ when not in use. Also tracks the last alloc / free.
+ For more information see Documentation/vm/slub.txt.
+
+ slub_max_order= [MM, SLUB]
+ Determines the maximum allowed order for slabs. Setting
+ this too high may cause fragmentation.
+ For more information see Documentation/vm/slub.txt.
+
+ slub_min_objects= [M, SLUB]

MM

+ The minimum objects per slab. SLUB will increase the
+ slab order up to slub_max_order to generate a
+ sufficiently big slab to satisfy the number of objects.
+ The higher the number of objects the smaller the overhead
+ of tracking slabs.
+ For more information see Documentation/vm/slub.txt.
+

Index: slub/Documentation/vm/slub.txt
===================================================================
--- slub.orig/Documentation/vm/slub.txt 2007-05-23 15:59:05.000000000 -0700
+++ slub/Documentation/vm/slub.txt 2007-05-23 16:34:20.000000000 -0700
@@ -1,13 +1,9 @@
Short users guide for SLUB
--------------------------

-First of all slub should transparently replace SLAB. If you enable
-SLUB then everything should work the same (Note the word "should".
-There is likely not much value in that word at this point).
-
The basic philosophy of SLUB is very different from SLAB. SLAB
requires rebuilding the kernel to activate debug options for all
-SLABS. SLUB always includes full debugging but its off by default.
+slab caches. SLUB always includes full debugging but its off by default.

it is

SLUB can enable debugging only for selected slabs in order to avoid
an impact on overall system performance which may make a bug more
difficult to find.
@@ -76,13 +72,28 @@ of objects.
Careful with tracing: It may spew out lots of information and never stop if
used on the wrong slab.

-SLAB Merging
+Slab merging
------------

-If no debugging is specified then SLUB may merge similar slabs together
+If no debug options are specified then SLUB may merge similar slabs together
in order to reduce overhead and increase cache hotness of objects.
slabinfo -a displays which slabs were merged together.

+Slab validation
+---------------
+
+SLUB can validate all object if the kernel was booted with slub_debug. In
+order to do so you must have the slabinfo tool. Then you can do
+
+slabinfo -v
+
+which will test all objects. Output will be generated to the syslog.
+
+This also works in a more limited way if boot was without slab debug.
+In that case slabinfo -v will simply tests all reachable objects. Usually

drop: will

+these are in the cpu slabs and the partial slabs. Full slabs are not

CPU

+tracked by SLUB in a non debug situation.
+
Getting more performance
------------------------

@@ -91,9 +102,9 @@ list_lock once in a while to deal with p
governed by the order of the allocation for each slab. The allocations
can be influenced by kernel parameters:

-slub_min_objects=x (default 8)
+slub_min_objects=x (default 4)
slub_min_order=x (default 0)
-slub_max_order=x (default 4)
+slub_max_order=x (default 1)

slub_min_objects allows to specify how many objects must at least fit
into one slab in order for the allocation order to be acceptable.
@@ -109,5 +120,107 @@ longer be checked. This is useful to avo
super large order pages to fit slub_min_objects of a slab cache with
large object sizes into one high order page.

+SLUB Debug output
+-----------------
+
+Here is a sample of slub debug output:
+
+@@@ SLUB kmalloc-8: Restoring redzone (0xcc) from 0xc90f6d28-0xc90f6d2b
+
...
+
+If SLUB encounters a corrupted object then it will perform the following
+actions

actions:

+
+1. Isolation and report of the issue
+
+This will be a message in the system log starting with
+
+*** SLUB <slab cache affected>: <What went wrong>@<object address>
+offset=<offset of object into slab> flags=<slabflags>
+inuse=<objects in use in this slab> freelist=<first free object in slab>
+
+2. Report on how the problem was dealt with in order to ensure the continued
+operation of the system.
+
+These are messages in the system log beginning with
+
+@@@ SLUB <slab cache affected>: <corrective action taken>
+
+
+In the above sample SLUB found that the Redzone of an active object has
+been overwritten. Here a string of 8 characters was written into a slab that
+has the length of 8 characters. However, a 8 character string needs a
+terminating 0. That zero has overwritten the first byte of the Redzone field.
+After reporting the details of the issue encountered the @@@ SLUB message
+tell us that SLUB has restored the redzone to its proper value and then
+system operations continue.
+
+Various types of lines can follow the @@@ SLUB line:
+
+Bytes b4 <address> : <bytes>
+ Show a few bytes before the object where the problem was detected.
+ Can be useful if the corruption does not stop with the start of the
+ object.
+
+Object <address> : <bytes>
+ The bytes of the object. If the object is inactive then the bytes
+ typically contain poisoning values. Any non poison value shows a

non-poison

+ corruption by a write after free.
+
+Redzone <address> : <bytes>
+ The redzone following the object. The redzone is used to detect
+ writes after the object. All bytes should always have the same
+ value. If there is any deviation then it is due to a write after
+ the object boundary.
+
+Freepointer
+ The pointer to the next free object in the slab. May become
+ corrupted if overwriting continues after the red zone.
+
+Last alloc:
+Last free:
+ Shows the address from which the object was allocated/freed last.
+ We note the pid, the time and the cpu that did so. This is usually

CPU

+ the most useful information to figure out where things went wrong.
+ Here get_modalias did an kmalloc(8) instead of a kmalloc(9).
+
+Filler <address> : <bytes>
+ Unused data to fill up the space in order to get the next object
+ properly aligned. In the debug case we make sure that there are
+ at least 4 bytes of filler. This allow for the detection of writes
+ before the object.
+
+Following the filler will be a stackdump. That stackdump describes the
+location where the error was detected. The cause of the corruption is more
+likely to be found by looking at the information about the last alloc / free.



How large is the RedZone? Is it a fixed size or does it vary?

---
~Randy
*** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code ***
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [patch] SLQB slab allocator
    ... obviously as different from SLUB as SLUB is from SLAB (apart from peripheral ... Now, if that means we have to replace SLUB with SLQB, I am fine ... so sure adding a completely separate allocator is the way to get ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: tipc_init(), WARNING: at arch/x86/mm/highmem_32.c:52, [2.6.24-rc4-git5: Reported regress
    ... It looks like SLUB will do a memclearfor the area twice for the slow case. ... SLUB was done because of a series of problem with the basic concepts of SLAB that treaten it usability in the future. ... SLAB requires a pass through all slab caches every 2 seconds to ... I remember network interrupts were taken by CPU 1, so most allocations were ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: tipc_init(), WARNING: at arch/x86/mm/highmem_32.c:52, [2.6.24-rc4-git5: Reported regress
    ... SLUB can be more than 10 times slower on hackbench. ... have you tried to tune SLAB in the above benchmark? ... the moment you start capturing more memory in SLUB's per cpu queues ... Use of SLAB DMA memory are exceedingly rare. ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [patch] SLQB slab allocator
    ... framework from SLUB, and added specific event counters things for SLQB. ... another complex subsystem (which itself depends back on the slab allocator). ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
  • Re: [patch] SLQB slab allocator
    ... obviously as different from SLUB as SLUB is from SLAB (apart from peripheral ... so sure adding a completely separate allocator is the way to get ... Down to the level of prefetching it is ...
    (Linux-Kernel)
Loading