Re: [Lse-tech] Re: A common layer for Accounting packages

From: Jay Lan
Date: Tue Feb 22 2005 - 15:12:53 EST


Guillaume Thouvenin wrote:
On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 17:16 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:

Jay Lan <jlan@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Since the need of Linux system accounting has gone beyond what BSD
accounting provides, i think it is a good idea to create a thin layer
of common code for various accounting packages, such as BSD accounting,
CSA, ELSA, etc. The hook to do_exit() at exit.c was changed to invoke
a routine in the common code which would then invoke those accounting
packages that register to the acct_common to handle do_exit situation.

This all seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Do we really want to
have lots of different system accounting packages all hooking into a
generic we-cant-decide-what-to-do-so-we-added-some-pointless-overhead
framework?

Can't we get _one_ accounting system in there, get it right, avoid the
framework?


Is it possible to just merge the BSD accounting and the CSA accounting
by adding in the current BSD per-process accounting structure some
missing fields like the mm integral provided by the CSA patch?

Hi Guillaume,

All raw data CSA needs already stored in task_struct of the process.


ELSA is just a user of the accounting data. We need a hook in the
do_fork() routine to manage group of processes, not to do accounting.

I see at least three layers of functions in doing system accounting:
data collection, handling of the raw data, and presentation of the
data to users.

We have merged the data collection part. :)

Handling of the raw data seems done in ELSA by user spaced daemon
and you are proposing to add a hook at fork time. I am interested
in learning your approach. How ELSA adds per process accounting data
to your grouping (banks) when a process exit? How do you save
accounting data you need in task_struct before it is disposed? BSD
handles that through acct_process() hook at do_exit(). CSA also
depends on a hook at do_exit() to merge per-process data to per-job
data. How does ELSA handle this without a need of a do_exit() hook?

Thanks,
- jay


Guillaume



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