Re: [RFC PATCH] mm/slab: Avoid build bug for calls to kmalloc with a large constant

Ryan Roberts
2024-11-26T14:27:46Z

On 26/11/2024 12:36, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> On 11/26/24 13:18, Ryan Roberts wrote:
>> On 14/11/2024 10:09, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>>> On 11/1/24 21:16, Dave Kleikamp wrote:
>>>> When boot-time page size is enabled, the test against KMALLOC_MAX_CACHE_SIZE
>>>> is no longer optimized out with a constant size, so a build bug may
>>>> occur on a path that won't be reached.
>>>
>>> That's rather unfortunate, the __builtin_constant_p(size) part of
>>> kmalloc_noprof() really expects things to resolve at compile time and it
>>> would be better to keep it that way.
>>>
>>> I think it would be better if we based KMALLOC_MAX_CACHE_SIZE itself on
>>> PAGE_SHIFT_MAX and kept it constant, instead of introducing
>>> KMALLOC_SHIFT_HIGH_MAX only for some sanity checks.
>>>
>>> So if the kernel was built to support 4k to 64k, but booted as 4k, it would
>>> still create and use kmalloc caches up to 128k. SLUB should handle that fine
>>> (if not, please report it :)
>>
>> So when PAGE_SIZE_MAX=64K and PAGE_SIZE=4K, kmalloc will support up to 128K
>> whereas before it only supported up to 8K. I was trying to avoid that since I
>> assumed that would be costly in terms of extra memory allocated for those higher
>> order buckets that will never be used. But I have no idea how SLUB works in
>> practice. Perhaps memory for the cache is only lazily allocated so we won't see
>> an issue in practice?
>
> Yes the e.g. 128k slabs themselves will be lazily allocated. There will be
> some overhead with the management structures (struct kmem_cache etc) but
> much smaller.
> To be completely honest, some extra overhead might come to be when the slabs
> are allocated ans later the user frees those allocations. kmalloc_large()
> wwould return them immediately, while a regular kmem_cache will keep one or
> more per cpu for reuse. But if that becomes a visible problem we can tune
> those caches to discard slabs more aggressively.
>
>> I'm happy to make this change if you're certain it's the right approach; please
>> confirm.
>
> Yes it's much better option than breaking the build-time-constant part of
> kmalloc_noprof().

OK, I'll take this approach as you suggest.

Thanks,
Ryan

>
>>>
>>> Maybe we could also stop adding + 1 to PAGE_SHIFT_MAX if it's >=64k, so the
>>> cache size is max 64k and not 128k but that should be probably evaluated
>>> separately from this series.
>>
>> I'm inferring from this that perhaps there is a memory cost with having the
>> higher orders defined but unused.
>
> Yeah as per above, should not be too large and we could tune it down if
> necessary.
>
>> Thanks,
>> Ryan
>>
>>>
>>> Vlastimil
>>>
>>>> Found compiling drivers/net/ethernet/qlogic/qed/qed_sriov.c
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Dave Kleikamp <dave.kleikamp@oracle.com>
>>>> ---
>>>>
>>>> Ryan,
>>>>
>>>> Please consider incorporating this fix or something similar into your
>>>> mm patch in the boot-time pages size patches.
>>>>
>>>> include/linux/slab.h | 3 ++-
>>>> 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>>>
>>>> diff --git a/include/linux/slab.h b/include/linux/slab.h
>>>> index 9848296ca6ba..a4c7507ab8ec 100644
>>>> --- a/include/linux/slab.h
>>>> +++ b/include/linux/slab.h
>>>> @@ -685,7 +685,8 @@ static __always_inline unsigned int __kmalloc_index(size_t size,
>>>> if (size <= 1024 * 1024) return 20;
>>>> if (size <= 2 * 1024 * 1024) return 21;
>>>>
>>>> - if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_PROFILE_ALL_BRANCHES) && size_is_constant)
>>>> + if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_ARM64_BOOT_TIME_PAGE_SIZE) &&
>>>> + !IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_PROFILE_ALL_BRANCHES) && size_is_constant)
>>>> BUILD_BUG_ON_MSG(1, "unexpected size in kmalloc_index()");
>>>> else
>>>> BUG();
>>>
>>
>