2021-07-07 12:51:24

by Vasily Gorbik

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: [RFC PATCH] livepatch: Speed up transition retries

That's just a racy hack for now for demonstration purposes.

On a s390 system with large amount of cpus
klp_try_complete_transition() often cannot be "complete" from the first
attempt. klp_try_complete_transition() schedules itself as delayed work
after a second delay. This accumulates to significant amount of time when
there are large number of livepatching transitions.

This patch tries to minimize this delay to counting processes which still
need to be transitioned and then scheduling
klp_try_complete_transition() right away.

For s390 LPAR with 128 cpu this reduces livepatch kselftest run time
from
real 1m11.837s
user 0m0.603s
sys 0m10.940s

to
real 0m14.550s
user 0m0.420s
sys 0m5.779s

And qa_test_klp run time from
real 5m15.950s
user 0m34.447s
sys 15m11.345s

to
real 3m51.987s
user 0m27.074s
sys 9m37.301s

Would smth like that be useful for production use cases?
Any ideas how to approach that more gracefully?

Signed-off-by: Vasily Gorbik <[email protected]>
---
kernel/livepatch/transition.c | 41 +++++++++++++++++++++++++----------
1 file changed, 30 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/livepatch/transition.c b/kernel/livepatch/transition.c
index 793eba46e970..fc4bb7a4a116 100644
--- a/kernel/livepatch/transition.c
+++ b/kernel/livepatch/transition.c
@@ -26,6 +26,8 @@ static int klp_target_state = KLP_UNDEFINED;

static unsigned int klp_signals_cnt;

+static atomic_t klp_procs;
+
/*
* This work can be performed periodically to finish patching or unpatching any
* "straggler" tasks which failed to transition in the first attempt.
@@ -181,8 +183,15 @@ void klp_update_patch_state(struct task_struct *task)
* of func->transition, if klp_ftrace_handler() is called later on
* the same CPU. See __klp_disable_patch().
*/
- if (test_and_clear_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING))
+ if (test_and_clear_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING)) {
task->patch_state = READ_ONCE(klp_target_state);
+ if (atomic_read(&klp_procs) == 0)
+ pr_err("klp_procs misaccounting\n");
+ else if (atomic_sub_return(1, &klp_procs) == 0) {
+ if (delayed_work_pending(&klp_transition_work))
+ mod_delayed_work(system_wq, &klp_transition_work, 0);
+ }
+ }

preempt_enable_notrace();
}
@@ -320,7 +329,8 @@ static bool klp_try_switch_task(struct task_struct *task)

success = true;

- clear_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING);
+ if (test_and_clear_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING))
+ atomic_sub(1, &klp_procs);
task->patch_state = klp_target_state;

done:
@@ -402,11 +412,6 @@ void klp_try_complete_transition(void)
* Usually this will transition most (or all) of the tasks on a system
* unless the patch includes changes to a very common function.
*/
- read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
- for_each_process_thread(g, task)
- if (!klp_try_switch_task(task))
- complete = false;
- read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);

/*
* Ditto for the idle "swapper" tasks.
@@ -424,10 +429,17 @@ void klp_try_complete_transition(void)
/* offline idle tasks can be switched immediately */
clear_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING);
task->patch_state = klp_target_state;
+ atomic_sub(1, &klp_procs);
}
}
put_online_cpus();

+ read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
+ for_each_process_thread(g, task)
+ if (!klp_try_switch_task(task))
+ complete = false;
+ read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);
+
if (!complete) {
if (klp_signals_cnt && !(klp_signals_cnt % SIGNALS_TIMEOUT))
klp_send_signals();
@@ -438,8 +450,8 @@ void klp_try_complete_transition(void)
* later and/or wait for other methods like kernel exit
* switching.
*/
- schedule_delayed_work(&klp_transition_work,
- round_jiffies_relative(HZ));
+ schedule_delayed_work(&klp_transition_work, atomic_read(&klp_procs) ?
+ round_jiffies_relative(HZ) : 0);
return;
}

@@ -473,6 +485,7 @@ void klp_start_transition(void)
klp_transition_patch->mod->name,
klp_target_state == KLP_PATCHED ? "patching" : "unpatching");

+ atomic_set(&klp_procs, 0);
/*
* Mark all normal tasks as needing a patch state update. They'll
* switch either in klp_try_complete_transition() or as they exit the
@@ -480,8 +493,10 @@ void klp_start_transition(void)
*/
read_lock(&tasklist_lock);
for_each_process_thread(g, task)
- if (task->patch_state != klp_target_state)
+ if (task->patch_state != klp_target_state) {
set_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING);
+ atomic_inc(&klp_procs);
+ }
read_unlock(&tasklist_lock);

/*
@@ -491,8 +506,10 @@ void klp_start_transition(void)
*/
for_each_possible_cpu(cpu) {
task = idle_task(cpu);
- if (task->patch_state != klp_target_state)
+ if (task->patch_state != klp_target_state) {
set_tsk_thread_flag(task, TIF_PATCH_PENDING);
+ atomic_inc(&klp_procs);
+ }
}

klp_signals_cnt = 0;
@@ -614,6 +631,8 @@ void klp_reverse_transition(void)
void klp_copy_process(struct task_struct *child)
{
child->patch_state = current->patch_state;
+ if (child->patch_state != klp_target_state)
+ atomic_add(1, &klp_procs);

/* TIF_PATCH_PENDING gets copied in setup_thread_stack() */
}
--
2.25.4


2021-07-08 10:37:57

by Petr Mladek

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] livepatch: Speed up transition retries

On Wed 2021-07-07 14:49:41, Vasily Gorbik wrote:
> That's just a racy hack for now for demonstration purposes.
>
> On a s390 system with large amount of cpus
> klp_try_complete_transition() often cannot be "complete" from the first
> attempt. klp_try_complete_transition() schedules itself as delayed work
> after a second delay. This accumulates to significant amount of time when
> there are large number of livepatching transitions.
>
> This patch tries to minimize this delay to counting processes which still
> need to be transitioned and then scheduling
> klp_try_complete_transition() right away.
>
> For s390 LPAR with 128 cpu this reduces livepatch kselftest run time
> from
> real 1m11.837s
> user 0m0.603s
> sys 0m10.940s
>
> to
> real 0m14.550s
> user 0m0.420s
> sys 0m5.779s
>
> And qa_test_klp run time from
> real 5m15.950s
> user 0m34.447s
> sys 15m11.345s
>
> to
> real 3m51.987s
> user 0m27.074s
> sys 9m37.301s
>
> Would smth like that be useful for production use cases?
> Any ideas how to approach that more gracefully?

Honestly, I do not see a real life use case for this, except maybe
speeding up a test suite.

The livepatch transition is more about reliability than about speed.
In the real life, a livepatch will be applied only once in a while.

We have spent weeks thinking about and discussing the consistency
model, code, and barriers to handle races correctly. Especially,
klp_update_patch_state() is a super-sensitive beast because it is
called without klp_lock. It might be pretty hard to synchronize
it with klp_reverse_transition() or klp_force_transition().

You would need to come up with a really convincing use case and
numbers to make it worth the effort.

Best Regards,
Petr

2021-07-08 13:20:56

by Vasily Gorbik

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] livepatch: Speed up transition retries

On Thu, Jul 08, 2021 at 12:35:24PM +0200, Petr Mladek wrote:
> On Wed 2021-07-07 14:49:41, Vasily Gorbik wrote:
> > That's just a racy hack for now for demonstration purposes.
> >
> > For s390 LPAR with 128 cpu this reduces livepatch kselftest run time
> > from
> > real 1m11.837s
> > user 0m0.603s
> > sys 0m10.940s
> >
> > to
> > real 0m14.550s
> > user 0m0.420s
> > sys 0m5.779s
> >
> > Would smth like that be useful for production use cases?
> > Any ideas how to approach that more gracefully?
>
> Honestly, I do not see a real life use case for this, except maybe
> speeding up a test suite.
>
> The livepatch transition is more about reliability than about speed.
> In the real life, a livepatch will be applied only once in a while.

That's what I thought. Thanks for looking. Dropping this one.

2021-07-08 14:58:40

by Petr Mladek

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] livepatch: Speed up transition retries

On Thu 2021-07-08 15:19:25, Vasily Gorbik wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 08, 2021 at 12:35:24PM +0200, Petr Mladek wrote:
> > On Wed 2021-07-07 14:49:41, Vasily Gorbik wrote:
> > > That's just a racy hack for now for demonstration purposes.
> > >
> > > For s390 LPAR with 128 cpu this reduces livepatch kselftest run time
> > > from
> > > real 1m11.837s
> > > user 0m0.603s
> > > sys 0m10.940s
> > >
> > > to
> > > real 0m14.550s
> > > user 0m0.420s
> > > sys 0m5.779s
> > >
> > > Would smth like that be useful for production use cases?
> > > Any ideas how to approach that more gracefully?
> >
> > Honestly, I do not see a real life use case for this, except maybe
> > speeding up a test suite.
> >
> > The livepatch transition is more about reliability than about speed.
> > In the real life, a livepatch will be applied only once in a while.
>
> That's what I thought. Thanks for looking. Dropping this one.

If you still wanted to speed up the transition from some reason
then an easy win might be to call klp_send_signals() earlier.

Well, my view is the following. The primary livepatching task is
to fix some broken/vulnerable functionality on a running kernel.
It should ideally happen on background and do not affect or slow
down the existing work load.

klp_send_signals() is not ideal. The fake signal interrupts syscalls
and they need to get restarted. Also the function wakes up a lot of
tasks and might increase load. Hence, it is used as a last resort that
allows to finish the transition in a reasonable time frame.

That said, the current timeouts are arbitrary chosen values based
rather on a common sense than on some measurement. I could imagine that
we could modify them or allow to trigger klp_send_signal() via
sysfs when there is a good reason.

Best Regards,
Petr