Re: [PATCH] cache last free vmap_area to avoid restarting beginning

From: Steven Whitehouse
Date: Wed May 19 2010 - 09:51:14 EST


Hi,

On Thu, 2010-05-06 at 02:16 +1000, Nick Piggin wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 01:48:48PM +0100, Steven Whitehouse wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > On Mon, 2010-05-03 at 02:29 +0900, Minchan Kim wrote:
> > > Hi, Steven.
> > >
> > > Sorry for lazy response.
> > > I wanted to submit the patch which implement Nick's request whole.
> > > And unfortunately, I am so busy now.
> > > But if it's urgent, I want to submit this one firstly and
> > > at next version, maybe I will submit remained TODO things
> > > after middle of May.
> > >
> > > I think this patch can't make regression other usages.
> > > Nick. What do you think about?
> > >
> > I guess the question is whether the remaining items are essential for
> > correct functioning of this patch, or whether they are "it would be nice
> > if" items. I suspect that they are the latter (I'm not a VM expert, but
> > from the brief descriptions it looks like that to me) in which case I'd
> > suggest send the currently existing patch first and the following up
> > with the remaining changes later.
> >
> > We have got a nice speed up with your current patch and so far as I'm
> > aware not introduced any new bugs or regressions with it.
> >
> > Nick, does that sound ok?
>
> Just got around to looking at it again. I definitely agree we need to
> fix the regression, however I'm concerned about introducing other
> possible problems while doing that.
>
> The following patch should (modulo bugs, but it's somewhat tested) give
> no difference in the allocation patterns, so won't introduce virtual
> memory layout changes.
>
> Any chance you could test it?
>

At last some further info on the failed boot during testing. The
messages look like this:

dracut: Starting plymouth daemon
G------------[ cut here ]------------
kernel BUG at mm/vmalloc.c:391!
invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP
last sysfs file: /sys/devices/virtual/vtconsole/vtcon0/uevent
CPU 7
Modules linked in:
Pid: 193, comm: modprobe Tainted: G W 2.6.32-23.el6.bz583026.patches2.3.7.x86_64 #1 ProLiant DL580 G3
RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff8113c161>] [<ffffffff8113c161>] alloc_vmap_area+0x431/0x440
RSP: 0018:ffff8803dae3bcf8 EFLAGS: 00010287
RAX: ffffc9001232e000 RBX: 0000000000004000 RCX: 0000000000000000
RDX: ffffffffa0000000 RSI: ffff8803db66fdc0 RDI: ffffffff81b6d0a0
RBP: ffff8803dae3bd88 R08: 000000000000000a R09: 00000000000000d0
R10: ffff8803db6b6e40 R11: 0000000000000040 R12: 0000000000000001
R13: ffffffffff000000 R14: ffffffffffffffff R15: ffffffffa0000000
FS: 00007f5872189700(0000) GS:ffff88002c2e0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000

and the code around that point is:

static struct vmap_area *alloc_vmap_area(unsigned long size,
unsigned long align,
unsigned long vstart, unsigned long vend,
int node, gfp_t gfp_mask)
{

...

if (!first)
goto found;

if (first->va_start < addr) {
391> BUG_ON(first->va_end < addr);
n = rb_next(&first->rb_node);
addr = ALIGN(first->va_end + PAGE_SIZE, align);
if (n)
first = rb_entry(n, struct vmap_area, rb_node);
else
goto found;
}


so that seems to pinpoint the line on which the problem occurred. Let us
know if you'd like us to do some more testing. I think we have the
console access issue fixed now. Many thanks for all you help in this
so far,

Steve.




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