Fix pacct bug in multithreading case.

From: KaiGai Kohei
Date: Tue Mar 28 2006 - 06:41:20 EST


Hello,

I noticed a bug on the process accounting facility.
In multi-threading process, some data would be recorded incorrectly
when the group_leader dies earlier than one or more threads.
The attached patch fixes this problem.

See below. 'bugacct' is a test program that create a worker thread
after 4 seconds sleeping, then the group_leader dies soon.
The worker thread consume CPU/Memory for 6 seconds, then exit.
We can estimate 10 seconds as etime and 6 seconds as stime + utime.
This is a sample program which the group_leader dies earlier than
other threads.

The results of same binary execution on different kernel are below.
-- accounted records --------------------
| btime | utime | stime | etime | minflt | majflt | comm |
original | 13:16:40 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 6.10 | 171 | 0 | bugacct |
patched | 13:20:21 | 5.83 | 0.18 | 10.03 | 32776 | 0 | bugacct |
(*) bugacct allocates 128MB memory, thus 128MB / 4KB = 32768 of minflt is
appropriate.

-- Test results in original kernel ------
$ date; time -p ./bugacct
Tue Mar 28 13:16:36 JST 2006 <- But pacct said btime is 13:16:40
real 10.11 <- But pacct said etime is 6.10
user 5.96 <- But pacct said utime is 0.00
sys 0.14 <- But pacct said stime is 0.00
$
-- Test results in patched kernel -------
$ date; time -p ./bugacct
Tue Mar 28 13:20:21 JST 2006
real 10.04
user 5.83
sys 0.19
$

In the original 2.6.16 kernel, pacct records btime, utime, stime, etime and
minflt incorrectly. In my opinion, this problem is caused by an assumption
that group_leader dies last.

The following section calculates process running time for etime and btime.
But it means running time of the thread that dies last, not process.
The start_time of the first thread in the process (group_leader) should
be reduced from uptime to calculate etime and btime correctly.
---- do_acct_process() in kernel/acct.c:
/* calculate run_time in nsec*/
do_posix_clock_monotonic_gettime(&uptime);
run_time = (u64)uptime.tv_sec*NSEC_PER_SEC + uptime.tv_nsec;
run_time -= (u64)current->start_time.tv_sec*NSEC_PER_SEC
+ current->start_time.tv_nsec;
----

The following section calculates stime and utime of the process.
But it might count the utime and stime of the group_leader duplicatly
and ignore the utime and stime of the thread dies last, when one or
more threads remain after group_leader dead.
The ac_utime should be calculated as the sum of the signal->utime
and utime of the thread dies last. The ac_stime should be done also.
---- do_acct_process() in kernel/acct.c:
jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->group_leader->utime,
current->signal->utime));
ac.ac_utime = encode_comp_t(jiffies_to_AHZ(jiffies));
jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->group_leader->stime,
current->signal->stime));
ac.ac_stime = encode_comp_t(jiffies_to_AHZ(jiffies));
----

The part of the minflt/majflt calculation has same problem.
This patch solves those problems, I think.

Any comments are welcome. Thanks.
--
Linux Promotion Center, NEC
KaiGai Kohei <kaigai@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
--- linux-2.6.16/kernel/acct.c 2006-03-20 14:53:29.000000000 +0900
+++ linux-2.6.16-kg/kernel/acct.c 2006-03-27 16:25:11.000000000 +0900
@@ -449,8 +449,8 @@ static void do_acct_process(long exitcod
/* calculate run_time in nsec*/
do_posix_clock_monotonic_gettime(&uptime);
run_time = (u64)uptime.tv_sec*NSEC_PER_SEC + uptime.tv_nsec;
- run_time -= (u64)current->start_time.tv_sec*NSEC_PER_SEC
- + current->start_time.tv_nsec;
+ run_time -= (u64)current->group_leader->start_time.tv_sec * NSEC_PER_SEC
+ + current->group_leader->start_time.tv_nsec;
/* convert nsec -> AHZ */
elapsed = nsec_to_AHZ(run_time);
#if ACCT_VERSION==3
@@ -469,10 +469,10 @@ static void do_acct_process(long exitcod
#endif
do_div(elapsed, AHZ);
ac.ac_btime = xtime.tv_sec - elapsed;
- jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->group_leader->utime,
+ jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->utime,
current->signal->utime));
ac.ac_utime = encode_comp_t(jiffies_to_AHZ(jiffies));
- jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->group_leader->stime,
+ jiffies = cputime_to_jiffies(cputime_add(current->stime,
current->signal->stime));
ac.ac_stime = encode_comp_t(jiffies_to_AHZ(jiffies));
/* we really need to bite the bullet and change layout */
@@ -522,9 +522,9 @@ static void do_acct_process(long exitcod
ac.ac_io = encode_comp_t(0 /* current->io_usage */); /* %% */
ac.ac_rw = encode_comp_t(ac.ac_io / 1024);
ac.ac_minflt = encode_comp_t(current->signal->min_flt +
- current->group_leader->min_flt);
+ current->min_flt);
ac.ac_majflt = encode_comp_t(current->signal->maj_flt +
- current->group_leader->maj_flt);
+ current->maj_flt);
ac.ac_swaps = encode_comp_t(0);
ac.ac_exitcode = exitcode;

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <sys/time.h>

#define BUFFER_SIZE (128 * 1024 * 1024) /* 128MB */

void *mychild(void *buffer) {
struct timeval tv;
u_int64_t t1, t2;

gettimeofday(&tv, NULL);
t1 = tv.tv_sec * 1000000 + tv.tv_usec;
t2 = t1 + 6 * 1000000;
/* heavy CPU/Mem job */
srand(tv.tv_usec);
while(t1 < t2) {
memset(buffer, rand(), BUFFER_SIZE);
gettimeofday(&tv, NULL);
t1 = tv.tv_sec * 1000000 + tv.tv_usec;
}
return NULL;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
pthread_t pthread;
void *buffer = NULL;

buffer = malloc(BUFFER_SIZE);
if (!buffer)
return 1;

sleep(4);
pthread_create(&pthread, NULL, mychild, buffer);
sleep(1);
pthread_exit(0);
}