Re: [Patch][RFC] Disabling per-tgid stats on task exit in taskstats

[Shailabh Nagar]

Paul Jackson wrote:

> Shailabh wrote:
>  
>
> > Sends a separate "registration" message with cpumask to listen to. 
> > Kernel stores (real) pid and cpumask.
> >    
>
> Question:
> =========
>
> Ah - good.
>
> So this means that I could configure a system with a fork/exit
> intensive, performance critical job on some dedicated CPUs, and be able
> to collect taskstat data from tasks exiting on the -other- CPUS, while
> avoiding collecting data from this special job, thus avoiding any
> taskstat collection performance impact on said job.
>
> If I'm understanding this correctly, excellent.
>  
Yes. If no one registers to listen on a particular CPU, data from tasks 
exiting on that cpu is
not sent out at all.

> Caveat:
> =======
>
> Passing cpumasks across the kernel-user boundary can be tricky.
>
> Historically, Unix has a long tradition of boloxing up the passing
> of variable length data types across the kernel-user boundary.
>
> We've got perhaps a half dozen ways of getting these masks out of the
> kernel, and three ways of getting them (or the similar nodemasks) back
> into the kernel.  The three ways being used in the sched_setaffinity
> system call, the mbind and set_mempolicy system calls, and the cpuset
> file system.
>
> All three of these ways have their controversial details:
> * The kernel cpumask mask size needed for sched_setaffinity calls is
>   not trivially available to userland.
> * The nodemask bit size is off by one in the mbind and set_mempolicy
>   calls.
> * The CPU and Node masks are ascii, not binary, in the cpuset calls.
>
> One option that might make sense for these task stat registrations
> would be to:
> 1) make the kernel/sched.c get_user_cpu_mask() routine generic,
>    moving it to non-static lib/*.c code, and
> 2) provide a sensible way for user space to query the size of
>    the kernel cpumask (and perhaps nodemask while you're at it.)
>
> Currently, the best way I know for user space to query the kernels
> cpumask and nodemask size is to examine the length of the ascii
> string values labeled "Cpus_allowed:" and "Mems_allowed:" in the file
> /proc/self/status.  These ascii strings always require exactly nine
> ascii chars to express each 32 bits of kernel mask code, if you include
> in the count the trailing ',' comma or '\n' newline after each eight
> ascii character word.
>
> Probing /proc/self/status fields for these mask sizes is rather
> unobvious and indirect, and requires caching the result if you care at
> all about performance.  Userland code in support of your taskstat
> facility might be better served by a more obvious way to size cpumasks.
>
> ... unless of course you're inclined to pass cpumasks formatted as
>    ascii strings, in which case speak up, as I'd be delighted to
>    throw in my 2 cents on how to do that ;).
>  
Thanks for the size info. I did hit it while coding this up.

So I chose to use the "cpulist" ascii format that has been helpfully 
provided in include/linux/cpumask.h (by whom I wonder :-)

User specified the cpumask as an ascii string containing comma separated 
cpu ranges.
Kernel parses the same and stores it as a cpumask_t after which we can 
iterate over the
mask using standard helpers.

Since registration/deregistration is not a common operation, the 
overhead of parsing
ascii strings should be acceptable and avoids the hassles of trying to 
determine kernel cpumask size. I don't know if there are buffer overflow 
issues in passing a string (though I'm using the
standard netlink way of passing it up using NLA_STRING).

Will post the patch shortly.

--Shailabh
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