[PATCH] proc: much faster /proc/vmstat

From: Alexey Dobriyan
Date: Sat Aug 06 2016 - 18:25:38 EST


Every current KDE system has process named ksysguardd polling files below
once in several seconds:

$ strace -e trace=open -p $(pidof ksysguardd)
Process 1812 attached
open("/etc/mtab", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 8
open("/etc/mtab", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 8
open("/proc/net/dev", O_RDONLY) = 8
open("/proc/net/wireless", O_RDONLY) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/proc/stat", O_RDONLY) = 8
open("/proc/vmstat", O_RDONLY) = 8

Hell knows what it is doing but speed up reading /proc/vmstat by 33%!

Benchmark is open+read+close 1.000.000 times.

BEFORE
$ perf stat -r 10 taskset -c 3 ./proc-vmstat

Performance counter stats for 'taskset -c 3 ./proc-vmstat' (10 runs):

13146.768464 task-clock (msec) # 0.960 CPUs utilized ( +- 0.60% )
15 context-switches # 0.001 K/sec ( +- 1.41% )
1 cpu-migrations # 0.000 K/sec ( +- 11.11% )
104 page-faults # 0.008 K/sec ( +- 0.57% )
45,489,799,349 cycles # 3.460 GHz ( +- 0.03% )
9,970,175,743 stalled-cycles-frontend # 21.92% frontend cycles idle ( +- 0.10% )
2,800,298,015 stalled-cycles-backend # 6.16% backend cycles idle ( +- 0.32% )
79,241,190,850 instructions # 1.74 insn per cycle
# 0.13 stalled cycles per insn ( +- 0.00% )
17,616,096,146 branches # 1339.956 M/sec ( +- 0.00% )
176,106,232 branch-misses # 1.00% of all branches ( +- 0.18% )

13.691078109 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.03% )
^^^^^^^^^^^^

AFTER
$ perf stat -r 10 taskset -c 3 ./proc-vmstat

Performance counter stats for 'taskset -c 3 ./proc-vmstat' (10 runs):

8688.353749 task-clock (msec) # 0.950 CPUs utilized ( +- 1.25% )
10 context-switches # 0.001 K/sec ( +- 2.13% )
1 cpu-migrations # 0.000 K/sec
104 page-faults # 0.012 K/sec ( +- 0.56% )
30,384,010,730 cycles # 3.497 GHz ( +- 0.07% )
12,296,259,407 stalled-cycles-frontend # 40.47% frontend cycles idle ( +- 0.13% )
3,370,668,651 stalled-cycles-backend # 11.09% backend cycles idle ( +- 0.69% )
28,969,052,879 instructions # 0.95 insn per cycle
# 0.42 stalled cycles per insn ( +- 0.01% )
6,308,245,891 branches # 726.058 M/sec ( +- 0.00% )
214,685,502 branch-misses # 3.40% of all branches ( +- 0.26% )

9.146081052 seconds time elapsed ( +- 0.07% )
^^^^^^^^^^^

Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@xxxxxxxxx>
---

mm/vmstat.c | 5 ++++-
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- a/mm/vmstat.c
+++ b/mm/vmstat.c
@@ -1592,7 +1592,10 @@ static int vmstat_show(struct seq_file *m, void *arg)
{
unsigned long *l = arg;
unsigned long off = l - (unsigned long *)m->private;
- seq_printf(m, "%s %lu\n", vmstat_text[off], *l);
+
+ seq_puts(m, vmstat_text[off]);
+ seq_put_decimal_ull(m, ' ', *l);
+ seq_putc(m, '\n');
return 0;
}