Re: [PATCH] percpu_counter: add percpu_counter_sum_all interface

Andrew Morton
2022-11-07T21:08:45Z

On Sat, 5 Nov 2022 01:40:13 +0000 Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com> wrote:

> The percpu_counter is used for scenarios where performance is more
> important than the accuracy. For percpu_counter users, who want more
> accurate information in their slowpath, percpu_counter_sum is provided
> which traverses all the online CPUs to accumulate the data. The reason
> it only needs to traverse online CPUs is because percpu_counter does
> implement CPU offline callback which syncs the local data of the
> offlined CPU.
>
> However there is a small race window between the online CPUs traversal
> of percpu_counter_sum and the CPU offline callback. The offline callback
> has to traverse all the percpu_counters on the system to flush the CPU
> local data which can be a lot. During that time, the CPU which is going
> offline has already been published as offline to all the readers. So, as
> the offline callback is running, percpu_counter_sum can be called for
> one counter which has some state on the CPU going offline. Since
> percpu_counter_sum only traverses online CPUs, it will skip that
> specific CPU and the offline callback might not have flushed the state
> for that specific percpu_counter on that offlined CPU.

OK, got it, thanks.

> Normally this is not an issue because percpu_counter users can deal with
> some inaccuracy for small time window. However a new user i.e. mm_struct
> on the cleanup path wants to check the exact state of the percpu_counter
> through check_mm(). For such users, this patch introduces
> percpu_counter_sum_all() which traverses all possible CPUs.

And uses it in fork.c:check_mm()!

> --- a/kernel/fork.c
> +++ b/kernel/fork.c
> @@ -756,7 +756,7 @@ static void check_mm(struct mm_struct *mm)
> "Please make sure 'struct resident_page_types[]' is updated as well");
>
> for (i = 0; i < NR_MM_COUNTERS; i++) {
> - long x = percpu_counter_sum(&mm->rss_stat[i]);
> + long x = percpu_counter_sum_all(&mm->rss_stat[i]);

check_mm() just became more expensive in some cases. nr_possible_cpus
* 4. I wonder if this is enough for people to start caring about.

check_mm() is presently non-optional and I'd be reluctant to change
this, given how commonly we see the "BUG: Bad rss-counter state"
getting reported (22 million hits in a google search!).

We could save a ton of that cost by running percpu_counter_sum() first,
then trying percpu_counter_sum_all() if percpu_counter_sum() indicated
an error. This is only worth bothering about if the new check_mm()
cost is a concern.