On Thu, Apr 24, 2025 at 8:20 AM Suren Baghdasaryan surenb@google.com wrote:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 5:24 PM Liam R. Howlett Liam.Howlett@oracle.com wrote:
- Andrii Nakryiko andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com [250423 18:06]:
On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 2:49 PM Suren Baghdasaryan surenb@google.com wrote:
On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 3:49 PM Andrii Nakryiko andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Apr 18, 2025 at 10:50 AM Suren Baghdasaryan surenb@google.com wrote:
With maple_tree supporting vma tree traversal under RCU and vma and its important members being RCU-safe, /proc/pid/maps can be read under RCU and without the need to read-lock mmap_lock. However vma content can change from under us, therefore we make a copy of the vma and we pin pointer fields used when generating the output (currently only vm_file and anon_name). Afterwards we check for concurrent address space modifications, wait for them to end and retry. While we take the mmap_lock for reading during such contention, we do that momentarily only to record new mm_wr_seq counter. This change is designed to reduce
This is probably a stupid question, but why do we need to take a lock just to record this counter? uprobes get away without taking mmap_lock even for reads, and still record this seq counter. And then detect whether there were any modifications in between. Why does this change need more heavy-weight mmap_read_lock to do speculative reads?
Not a stupid question. mmap_read_lock() is used to wait for the writer to finish what it's doing and then we continue by recording a new sequence counter value and call mmap_read_unlock. This is what get_vma_snapshot() does. But your question made me realize that we can optimize m_start() further by not taking mmap_read_lock at all. Instead of taking mmap_read_lock then doing drop_mmap_lock() we can try mmap_lock_speculate_try_begin() and only if it fails do the same dance we do in the get_vma_snapshot(). I think that should work.
Ok, yeah, it would be great to avoid taking a lock in a common case!
We can check this counter once per 4k block and maintain the same 'tearing' that exists today instead of per-vma. Not that anyone said they had an issue with changing it, but since we're on this road anyways I'd thought I'd point out where we could end up.
We would need to run that check on the last call to show_map() right before seq_file detects the overflow and flushes the page. On contention we will also be throwing away more prepared data (up to a page worth of records) vs only the last record. All in all I'm not convinced this is worth doing unless increased chances of data tearing is identified as a problem.
Yep, I agree, with filling out 4K of data we run into much higher chances of conflict, IMO. Not worth it, I'd say.
I am concerned about live locking in either scenario, but I haven't looked too deep into this pattern.
I also don't love (as usual) the lack of ensured forward progress.
Hmm. Maybe we should add a retry limit on mmap_lock_speculate_try_begin() and once the limit is hit we just take the mmap_read_lock and proceed with it? That would prevent a hyperactive writer from blocking the reader's forward progress indefinitely.
Came here to say the same. I'd add a small number of retries (3-5?) and then fallback to the read-locked approach. The main challenge is to keep all this logic nicely isolated from the main VMA search/printing logic.
For a similar pattern in uprobes, we don't even bother to rety, we just fallback to mmap_read_lock and proceed, under the assumption that this is going to be very rare and thus not important from the overall performance perspective.
It seems like we have four cases for the vm area state now:
- we want to read a stable vma or set of vmas (per-vma locking)
- we want to read a stable mm state for reading (the very short named
mmap_lock_speculate_try_begin)
and we don't mind retrying on contention. This one should be done under RCU protection.
- we ensure a stable vma/mm state for reading (mmap read lock)
- we are writing - get out of my way (mmap write lock).
I wouldn't call #2 a vma state. More of a usecase when we want to read vma under RCU (valid but can change from under us) and then retry if it might have been modified from under us.
Cheers, Liam