[PATCH?] fput: don't abuse task_work_add() too much

Oleg Nesterov
2015-09-07T12:29:59Z

On 09/05, Al Viro wrote:
>
> On Sat, Aug 29, 2015 at 02:49:21PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
>
> > Let's look keyctl_session_to_parent(). It does task_work_cancel()
> > but only because we can not trust user-space. Otherwise we could
> > remove it and just do task_work_add(), but this needs fifo.
> >
> > Fifo just looks more sane to me.
>
> Not if it costs us.

OK, Eric reports this trivial lockless loop takes 275ms. Apparently the
list of ____fput() works is huge. Now, how much does it cost to _create_
this huge list using task_work_add() which does cmpxchg() ? I guess a bit
more. This is what should be fixed if we think this hurts performance-wise.

And again, ignoring the latency problem due to the lack of cond_resched,
I am wondering if these 275ms are actually noticable compared to the time
the next loop needs to call all these ____fput's.

> As far as files closing is concerned, the order
> really doesn't matter. Ditto for final mntput() uses of that stuff.

Sure, fput/mntput do not care about the ordering. And more, they do
not even really need task_work_add(). We can just remove it from fput()
and everything will work fine. Correctness-wise, I mean.

And yes, unfortunately we do not have in-kernel users which already
rely on fifo.

But task_work_add() is the generic API, loosing the ordering makes
it less useful or at least less convenient.

Just for (yes sure, artificial) example. Suppose we want to implement
sys_change_process_flags(int pid, uint set, uint clr). Only current
can change its ->flags, so we can use task_work_add() to do this. But
obviously only if it is fifo.

fput() differs because it does not care which process actually does
__fput(). And thus imo we should not count this user if we need to
decide do we need fifo or not.

> IMO the obvious solution is to lose the reordering...

Oh, I disagree. But I guess I can't convince you/Eric/Linus, so I have
to shut up.

Damn. But I can't relax ;) Al, Linus, could you comment the patch below?

Not for inclusion, lacks the changelog/testing, fput() can be simplified.
But as you can see it is simple. With this patch task_work_add(____fput)
will be called only once by (say) do_exit() path. ->fput_list does not
need any serialization / atomic ops / etc. Probably we also need to move
cond_resched() from task_work_run() to ____fput() after this patch.

Again, it is not that I think this actually makes sense, but since you
dislike these 275ms...

What do you think?

Oleg.
---

diff --git a/fs/file_table.c b/fs/file_table.c
index 294174d..36af701 100644
--- a/fs/file_table.c
+++ b/fs/file_table.c
@@ -241,7 +241,13 @@ static void delayed_fput(struct work_struct *unused)

static void ____fput(struct callback_head *work)
{
- __fput(container_of(work, struct file, f_u.fu_rcuhead));
+ struct task_struct *task = current;
+ do {
+ struct file *file = task->fput_list;
+ task->fput_list = file->f_u.fu_next;
+ __fput(file);
+
+ } while (task->fput_list);
}

/*
@@ -267,9 +273,19 @@ void fput(struct file *file)
struct task_struct *task = current;

if (likely(!in_interrupt() && !(task->flags & PF_KTHREAD))) {
+ if (task->fput_list) {
+ /* task_work_add() below was already called */
+ file->f_u.fu_next = task->fput_list;
+ task->fput_list = file;
+ return;
+ }
+
init_task_work(&file->f_u.fu_rcuhead, ____fput);
- if (!task_work_add(task, &file->f_u.fu_rcuhead, true))
+ if (!task_work_add(task, &file->f_u.fu_rcuhead, true)) {
+ file->f_u.fu_next = NULL;
+ task->fput_list = file;
return;
+ }
/*
* After this task has run exit_task_work(),
* task_work_add() will fail. Fall through to delayed
diff --git a/include/linux/fs.h b/include/linux/fs.h
index 0774487..73fe16c 100644
--- a/include/linux/fs.h
+++ b/include/linux/fs.h
@@ -830,6 +830,7 @@ struct file {
union {
struct llist_node fu_llist;
struct rcu_head fu_rcuhead;
+ struct file *fu_next;
} f_u;
struct path f_path;
struct inode *f_inode; /* cached value */
diff --git a/include/linux/sched.h b/include/linux/sched.h
index f192cfe..6f704ff 100644
--- a/include/linux/sched.h
+++ b/include/linux/sched.h
@@ -1477,6 +1477,7 @@ struct task_struct {
struct fs_struct *fs;
/* open file information */
struct files_struct *files;
+ struct file *fput_list;
/* namespaces */
struct nsproxy *nsproxy;
/* signal handlers */
diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index 03c1eaa..77c0a50 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -1007,6 +1007,7 @@ static int copy_files(unsigned long clone_flags, struct task_struct *tsk)
struct files_struct *oldf, *newf;
int error = 0;

+ tsk->fput_list = NULL;
/*
* A background process may not have any files ...
*/