Steffen reported endless printing of "No data" when reading from
alloc/free_traces attribute in /sys/kernel/debug/slab/, at least on
s390, but I don't see how this could be arch-specific.
I must admit that I am completely confused by the seq_file interface
in general, but even more so from this specific implementation.
First I suspected a bug in slab_debugfs_next(), because of its very
weird usage of the *v parameter, which seems totally useless, but not
responsible for this bug. Still, out of curiosity, does anybody have a
clue why it is done this way, and not e.g. like this?
diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
index f7368bfffb7a..0b1832b16f5b 100644
--- a/mm/slub.c
+++ b/mm/slub.c
@@ -6105,10 +6105,9 @@ static void *slab_debugfs_next(struct seq_file *seq, void *v, loff_t *ppos)
{
struct loc_track *t = seq->private;
- v = ppos;
++*ppos;
if (*ppos <= t->count)
- return v;
+ return ppos;
return NULL;
}
Anyway, NULL is returned for the "*ppos > t->count" case, as described
in Documentation/filesystems/seq_file.rst, for "if the sequence is
complete", so that should be ok, but still very confusing. Unfortunately,
the documentation does not seem to explain that *v parameter at all, or
I missed it, but in this case here it seems to be simply ignored and
misused w/o any need.
The documentation does mention that "in most cases the start() function
should check for a "past end of file" condition and return NULL if need
be". So I just added a similar check to slab_debugfs_start() and return
NULL for "*ppos > t->count", which apparently fixed the bug. "No data"
is now only printed once, like it was before commit 64dd68497be7
("mm: slub: move sysfs slab alloc/free interfaces to debugfs").
However, since I obviously do not really understand the seq_file
documentation, and also not the alloc/free_traces stuff in general,
that fix might be wrong or incomplete. Comments are welcome.
Gerald Schaefer (1):
mm/slub: fix endless "No data" printing for alloc/free_traces
attribute
mm/slub.c | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
--
2.25.1
On 11/17/21 20:39, Gerald Schaefer wrote:
> Steffen reported endless printing of "No data" when reading from
> alloc/free_traces attribute in /sys/kernel/debug/slab/, at least on
> s390, but I don't see how this could be arch-specific.
>
> I must admit that I am completely confused by the seq_file interface
Me too, everytime I have to deal with it I relearn it.
> in general, but even more so from this specific implementation.
Right.
> First I suspected a bug in slab_debugfs_next(), because of its very
> weird usage of the *v parameter, which seems totally useless, but not
> responsible for this bug. Still, out of curiosity, does anybody have a
> clue why it is done this way, and not e.g. like this?
>
> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> index f7368bfffb7a..0b1832b16f5b 100644
> --- a/mm/slub.c
> +++ b/mm/slub.c
> @@ -6105,10 +6105,9 @@ static void *slab_debugfs_next(struct seq_file *seq, void *v, loff_t *ppos)
> {
> struct loc_track *t = seq->private;
>
> - v = ppos;
> ++*ppos;
> if (*ppos <= t->count)
> - return v;
> + return ppos;
>
> return NULL;
> }
Yeah that should work and make it a bit less confusing.
>
> Anyway, NULL is returned for the "*ppos > t->count" case, as described
> in Documentation/filesystems/seq_file.rst, for "if the sequence is
> complete", so that should be ok, but still very confusing. Unfortunately,
> the documentation does not seem to explain that *v parameter at all, or
> I missed it, but in this case here it seems to be simply ignored and
> misused w/o any need.
>
> The documentation does mention that "in most cases the start() function
> should check for a "past end of file" condition and return NULL if need
> be". So I just added a similar check to slab_debugfs_start() and return
> NULL for "*ppos > t->count", which apparently fixed the bug. "No data"
> is now only printed once, like it was before commit 64dd68497be7
> ("mm: slub: move sysfs slab alloc/free interfaces to debugfs").
>
> However, since I obviously do not really understand the seq_file
> documentation, and also not the alloc/free_traces stuff in general,
> that fix might be wrong or incomplete. Comments are welcome.
>
> Gerald Schaefer (1):
> mm/slub: fix endless "No data" printing for alloc/free_traces
> attribute
>
> mm/slub.c | 5 +++++
> 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
>