Re: [Y2038] [PATCH 04/11] posix timers:Introduce the 64bit methods with timespec64 type for k_clock structure

Arnd Bergmann
2015-04-22T11:07:44Z

On Wednesday 22 April 2015 10:45:23 Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2015, Thomas Gleixner wrote:

> So we could save one translation step if we implement new syscalls
> which have a scalar nsec interface instead of the timespec/timeval
> cruft and let user space do the translation to whatever it wants.
>
> So
>
> sys_clock_nanosleep(const clockid_t which_clock, int flags,
> const struct timespec __user *expires,
> struct timespec __user *reminder)
>
> would get the new syscall variant:
>
> sys_clock_nanosleep_ns(const clockid_t which_clock, int flags,
> const s64 expires, s64 __user *reminder)

As you might expect, there are a number of complications with this
approach:

- John Stultz likes to point out that it's easier to do one change
at a time, so extending the interface to 64-bit has less potential
of breaking things than a more fundamental change. I think it's
useful to drop a lot of the syscalls when a more modern version
is around (e.g. let libc implement usleep and nanosleep through
clock_nanosleep), but keep the syscalls as close to the known-working
64-bit versions as we can.
- The inode timestamp related syscalls (stat, utimes and variants
thereof) require the full range of time64_t and cannot use ktime_t.
- converting between timespec types of different size is cheap,
converting timespec to ktime_t is still relatively cheap, but
converting ktime_t to timespec is rather expensive (at least eight
32-bit multiplies, plus a few shifts and additions if you don't
have 64-bit arithmetic).
- ioctls that pass a timespec need to keep doing that or would require
a source-level change in user space instead of recompiling.

> I personally would welcome such an interface as it makes user space
> programming simpler. Just (re)arming a periodic nanosleep based on
> absolute expiry time is horrible stupid today:
>
> struct timespec expires;
> ....
> while ()
> expires.tv_nsec += period.tv_nsec;
> expires.tv_sec += period.tv_sec;
> normalize_timespec(&expires);
> sys_clock_nanosleep(CLOCK_ID, ABS, &expires, NULL);
>
> So with a scalar interface this would reduce to:
>
> s64 expires;
> ....
> while ()
> expires += period;
> sys_clock_nanosleep_ns(CLOCK_ID, ABS, &expires, NULL);
>
> There is a difference both in text and storage size plus the avoidance
> of the two translation steps (one translation step on 64bit).

We should probably look at it separately for each syscall. It's
quite possible that we find a number of them for which it helps
and others for which it hurts, so we need to see the big pictures.

There are also a few other calls that will never need 64-bit
time_t because the range is limited by the need to only ever
pass relative timeouts (select, poll, io_getevents, recvmmsg,
clock_getres, rt_sigtimedwait, sched_rr_get_interval, getrusage,
waitid, semtimedop, sysinfo), so we could actually leave them
using a 32-bit structure and have the libc do the conversion.

> I know that this is non portable, but OTOH if I look at the non
> portable mechanisms which are used by data bases, java VMs and other
> apps which exist to squeeze the last cycles out of the system, there
> is certainly some value to that.
>
> The portable/spec conforming apps can still use the user space
> assisted translated timespec/timeval mechanisms.
>
> There is one caveat though: sys_clock_gettime and sys_gettimeofday
> will still need a syscall_timespec64 variant. We have no double
> translation steps there because we maintain the timespec
> representation in the timekeeping code for performance reasons to
> avoid the division in the syscall interface. But everything else can
> do nicely without the timespec cruft.
>
> We really should talk to libc folks and high performance users about
> this before blindly adding a gazillion of new timespec64 based
> interfaces.

I've started a list of affected syscalls at
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HCYwHXxs48TsTb6IGUduNjQnmfRvMPzCN6T_0YiQwis/edit?usp=sharing

Still adding more calls and description, let me know if you want edit
permissions.

Arnd