Re: High load in 2.6.27, NFS / rpcauth_lookup_credcache()?

Trond Myklebust
2008-10-23T14:56:14Z

On Thu, 2008-10-23 at 14:36 +0200, Max Kellermann wrote:
> On 2008/10/22 11:12, Max Kellermann <max@duempel.org> wrote:
> > after I was able to fix http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/17/147, the
> > server which was already upgraded to 2.6.27.2 still gets very high
> > load. It is a web server with NFS file storage (NetApp), and while
> > the others in the cluster (kernel 2.6.25) have a load of 1-3, 2.6.27.2
> > gets 30-50.
> >
> > I did an oprofile, with the following results (server just started,
> > load "only" 5-10):
> >
> > 87593 56.1116 (no location information) vmlinux
> > vmlinux rpcauth_lookup_credcache
> > 16037 10.2732 auth_generic.c:0 vmlinux
> > vmlinux generic_match
> > 6460 4.1382 (no location information) php4
> > php4 (no symbols)
> > 2478 1.5874 (no location information) libc-2.7.so
> > libc-2.7.so (no symbols)
> > [...]
> >
> > We havn't configured any special authentication method. It is a NFSv3
> > over UDP mount, but the kernel has NFSv4 and therefore KRB5 enabled.
> >
> > Any ideas why rpcauth_lookup_credcache() goes overboard with CPU
> > usage?
>
> I have bisected the problem: 98a8e323 is the result ("SUNRPC: Add a
> helper rpcauth_lookup_generic_cred()"). 5c691044 is ok.
>
> See the attached oprofile annotation data for both commits. I guess
> that the function rpcauth_lookup_credcache() is waiting for a spinlock
> too often and too long. Trond, any idea?

Can you add a '-v' to the rpc.gssd daemon startup line? I'd like to see
how often you are creating new gss contexts.

> Harry: added you to Cc because your problem sounds similar.

Harry's problem is should be unrelated. afaik, he is seeing a problem
with userland RPC code, not kernel rpc code.

Trond