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authorDavid Vernet <void@manifault.com>2023-02-16 02:30:33 +0300
committerAlexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>2023-03-13 22:42:24 +0300
commit22df776a9a866713d9decfb92b633bcfdb571954 (patch)
treea57622f4aabafd7cf0f6fb5fc8d0cac50e11e2a8 /samples/bpf
parent34f0677e7afd3a292bc1aadda7ce8e35faedb204 (diff)
downloadlinux-22df776a9a866713d9decfb92b633bcfdb571954.tar.xz
tasks: Extract rcu_users out of union
In commit 3fbd7ee285b2b ("tasks: Add a count of task RCU users"), a count on the number of RCU users was added to struct task_struct. This was done so as to enable the removal of task_rcu_dereference(), and allow tasks to be protected by RCU even after exiting and being removed from the runqueue. In this commit, the 'refcount_t rcu_users' field that keeps track of this refcount was put into a union co-located with 'struct rcu_head rcu', so as to avoid taking up any extra space in task_struct. This was possible to do safely, because the field was only ever decremented by a static set of specific callers, and then never incremented again. While this restriction of there only being a small, static set of users of this field has worked fine, it prevents us from leveraging the field to use RCU to protect tasks in other contexts. During tracing, for example, it would be useful to be able to collect some tasks that performed a certain operation, put them in a map, and then periodically summarize who they are, which cgroup they're in, how much CPU time they've utilized, etc. While this can currently be done with 'usage', it becomes tricky when a task is already in a map, or if a reference should only be taken if a task is valid and will not soon be reaped. Ideally, we could do something like pass a reference to a map value, and then try to acquire a reference to the task in an RCU read region by using refcount_inc_not_zero(). Similarly, in sched_ext, schedulers are using integer pids to remember tasks, and then looking them up with find_task_by_pid_ns(). This is slow, error prone, and adds complexity. It would be more convenient and performant if BPF schedulers could instead store tasks directly in maps, and then leverage RCU to ensure they can be safely accessed with low overhead. Finally, overloading fields like this is error prone. Someone that wants to use 'rcu_users' could easily overlook the fact that once the rcu callback is scheduled, the refcount will go back to being nonzero, thus precluding the use of refcount_inc_not_zero(). Furthermore, as described below, it's possible to extract the fields of the union without changing the size of task_struct. There are several possible ways to enable this: 1. The lightest touch approach is likely the one proposed in this patch, which is to simply extract 'rcu_users' and 'rcu' from the union, so that scheduling the 'rcu' callback doesn't overwrite the 'rcu_users' refcount. If we have a trusted task pointer, this would allow us to use refcnt_inc_not_zero() inside of an RCU region to determine if we can safely acquire a reference to the task and store it in a map. As mentioned below, this can be done without changing the size of task_struct, by moving the location of the union to another location that has padding gaps we can fill in. 2. Removing 'refcount_t rcu_users', and instead having the entire task be freed in an rcu callback. This is likely the most sound overall design, though it changes the behavioral semantics exposed to callers, who currently expect that a task that's successfully looked up in e.g. the pid_list with find_task_by_pid_ns(), can always have a 'usage' reference acquired on them, as it's guaranteed to be > 0 until after the next gp. In order for this approach to work, we'd have to audit all callers. This approach also slightly changes behavior observed by user space by not invoking trace_sched_process_free() until the whole task_struct is actually being freed, rather than just after it's exited. It also may change timings, as memory will be freed in an RCU callback rather than immediately when the final 'usage' refcount drops to 0. This also is arguably a benefit, as it provides more predictable performance to callers who are refcounting tasks. 3. There may be other solutions as well that don't require changing the layout of task_struct. For example, we could possibly do something complex from the BPF side, such as listen for task exit and remove a task from a map when the task is exiting. This would likely require significant custom handling for task_struct in the verifier, so a more generalizable solution is likely warranted. As mentioned above, this patch proposes the lightest-touch approach which allows callers elsewhere in the kernel to use 'rcu_users' to ensure the lifetime of a task, by extracting 'rcu_users' and 'rcu' from the union. There is no size change in task_struct with this patch. Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: David Vernet <void@manifault.com> Acked-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20230215233033.889644-1-void@manifault.com Signed-off-by: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
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