Re: [PATCH v1 1/1] s390/arch_random: Buffer true random data

Harald Freudenberger
2022-07-06T16:18:40Z

On 2022-07-05 18:27, Holger Dengler wrote:
> Hi Jason,
>
> On 05/07/2022 17:11, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
>> Hi Holger,
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 05, 2022 at 04:58:30PM +0200, Holger Dengler wrote:
>>> It is true, that the performance of the instruction is not really
>>> relevant, but only for calls outside of an interrupt context. I did
>>> some ftrace logging for the s390_random_get_seed_long() calls, and -
>>> as you said - there are a few calls per minute. But there was also
>>> some repeating calls in interrupt context. On systems with a huge
>>> interrupt load, this can cause severe performance impacts. I've no
>>
>> It'd be interesting to know more about this. The way you get
>> arch_random_get_seed_long() from irq context is:
>>
>> get_random_{bytes,int,long,u32,u64}()
>> crng_make_state()
>> crng_reseed() <-- Rarely
>> extract_entropy()
>> arch_get_random_seed_long()
>>
>> So if an irq user of get_random_xx() is the unlucky one in the minute
>> span who has to call crng_reseed() then, yea, that'll happen. But I
>> wonder about this luck aspect. What scenarios are you seeing where
>> this
>> happens all the time? Which driver is using random bytes *so* commonly
>> from irq context? Not that, per say, there's anything wrong with that,
>> but it could be eyebrow raising, and might point to de facto solutions
>> that mostly take care of this.
>
> I saw a few calls in interrupt context during my tracing, but I didn't
> look to see which ones they were. Let me figure that out in the next
> few days and provide more information on that.
>
>> One such direction might be making a driver that does such a thing do
>> it
>> a little bit less, somehow. Another direction would be preferring
>> non-irqs to handle crng_reseed(), but not disallowing irqs entirely,
>> with a patch something like the one below. Or maybe there are other
>> ideas.
>
> Reduce the number of trng in interrupt context is a possibility, but -
> in my opinion - only one single trng instruction call in interrupt
> context in one too much.
>
> For the moment, I would propose to drop the buffering but also return
> false, if arch_random_get_seed_long() is called in interrupt context.
>
> diff --git a/arch/s390/include/asm/archrandom.h
> b/arch/s390/include/asm/archrandom.h
> index 2c6e1c6ecbe7..711357bdc464 100644
> --- a/arch/s390/include/asm/archrandom.h
> +++ b/arch/s390/include/asm/archrandom.h
> @@ -32,7 +32,8 @@ static inline bool __must_check
> arch_get_random_int(unsigned int *v)
>
> static inline bool __must_check arch_get_random_seed_long(unsigned
> long *v)
> {
> - if (static_branch_likely(&s390_arch_random_available)) {
> + if (static_branch_likely(&s390_arch_random_available) &&
> + !in_interrupt()) {
> cpacf_trng(NULL, 0, (u8 *)v, sizeof(*v));
> atomic64_add(sizeof(*v), &s390_arch_random_counter);
> return true;
>
> (on-top of your commit, without our buffering patch)
>
>>
>> But all this is to say that having some more of the "mundane" details
>> about this might actually help us.
>>
>> Jason
>>
>> diff --git a/drivers/char/random.c b/drivers/char/random.c
>> index e3dd1dd3dd22..81df8cdf2a62 100644
>> --- a/drivers/char/random.c
>> +++ b/drivers/char/random.c
>> @@ -270,6 +270,9 @@ static bool crng_has_old_seed(void)
>> static bool early_boot = true;
>> unsigned long interval = CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL;
>>
>> + if (in_hardirq())
>> + interval += HZ * 10;
>> +
>> if (unlikely(READ_ONCE(early_boot))) {
>> time64_t uptime = ktime_get_seconds();
>> if (uptime >= CRNG_RESEED_INTERVAL / HZ * 2)
>>

Hi Holger and Jason
I tried to find out what is the reason of the invocations in interrupt
context.
First I have to admit that there is in fact not much of
arch_get_random_seed_long()
invocation any more in the recent kernel (5.19-rc5). I see about 100
invocations
within 10 minutes with an LPAR running some qperf and dd dumps on dasds
test load.
About half of these invocations is in interrupt context. I
dump_stack()ed some of
these and I always catch the function
kfence_guarded_alloc()
prandom_u32_max()
prandom_u32()
get_random_u32()
_get_random_bytes()
crng_make_state()
crng_reseed()
extract_entropy()
arch_get_random_seed_long()

However, with so few invocations it should not make any harm when there
is a
even very expensive trng() invocation in interrupt context.

But I think we should check, if this is really something to backport to
the older
kernels where arch_get_random_seed_long() is called really frequency.

Harald Freudenberger