[PATCH 00/32] kernel: Introduce Time Namespace

From: Dmitry Safonov
Date: Tue Feb 05 2019 - 19:11:13 EST

Discussions around time namespace are there for a long time. The first
attempt to implement it was in 2006 by Jeff Dike. From that time, the
topic appears on and off in various discussions.

There are two main use cases for time namespaces:
1. change date and time inside a container;
2. adjust clocks for a container restored from a checkpoint.

âIt seems like this might be one of the last major obstacles keeping
migration from being used in production systems, given that not all
containers and connections can be migrated as long as a time dependency
is capable of messing it up.â (by github.com/dav-ell)

The kernel provides access to several clocks: CLOCK_REALTIME,
CLOCK_MONOTONIC, CLOCK_BOOTTIME. Last two clocks are monotonous, but the
start points for them are not defined and are different for each
system. When a container is migrated from one node to another, all
clocks have to be restored into consistent states; in other words, they
have to continue running from the same points where they have been
dumped.

The main idea of this patch set is adding per-namespace offsets for
system clocks. When a process in a non-root time namespace requests
time of a clock, a namespace offset is added to the current value of
this clock and the sum is returned.

All offsets are placed on a separate page, this allows us to map it as
part of VVAR into user processes and use offsets from VDSO calls.

Now offsets are implemented for CLOCK_MONOTONIC and CLOCK_BOOTTIME
clocks.

v2: There are two major changes from the previous version:

* Two versions of the VDSO library to avoid a performance penalty for
host tasks outside time namespace (as suggested by Andy and Thomas).

As it has been discussed on timens RFC, adding a new conditional branch
`if (inside_time_ns)` on VDSO for all processes is undesirable.
It will add a penalty for everybody as branch predictor may mispredict
the jump. Also there are instruction cache lines wasted on cmp/jmp.

Those effects of introducing time namespace are very much unwanted
having in mind how much work have been spent on micro-optimisation
VDSO code.

Addressing those problems, there are two versions of VDSO's .so:
for host tasks (without any penalty) and for processes inside of time
namespace with clk_to_ns() that subtracts offsets from host's time.


* Allow to set clock offsets for a namespace only before any processes
appear in it.

Now a time namespace looks similar to a pid namespace in a way how it is
created: unshare(CLONE_NEWTIME) system call creates a new time namespace,
but doesn't set it to the current process. Then all children of
the process will be born in the new time namespace, or a process can
use the setns() system call to join a namespace.

This scheme allows to create a new time namespaces, set clock offsets
and then populate the namespace with processes.

Our performance measurements show that the price of VDSO's clock_gettime()
in a child time namespace is about 8% with a hot CPU cache and about 90%
with a cold CPU cache. There is no performance regression for host
processes outside time namespace on those tests.

We wrote two small benchmarks. The first one gettime_perf.c calls
clock_gettime() in a loop for 3 seconds. It shows us performance with
a hot CPU cache (more clock_gettime() cycles - the better):

| before | CONFIG_TIME_NS=n | host | inside timens
--------|------------|------------------|-------------|-------------
cycles | 139887013 | 139453003 | 139899785 | 128792458
diff (%)| 100 | 99.7 | 100 | 92

The second one gettime_perf_cold.c calls rdtsc, clock_gettime(), rdtsc
and shows a difference between second and first rdtsc. The binary is
called in a loop 1000 times, then calculate MODE for 1000 values.
It should show us performance with a cold CPU cache
(lesser tsc per cycle - the better):

| before | CONFIG_TIME_NS=n | host | inside timens
--------|------------|------------------|-------------|-------------
tsc | 6748 | 6718 | 6862 | 12682
diff (%)| 100 | 99.6 | 101.7 | 188

The numbers gathered on Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300U CPU @ 2.40GHz.

Cc: Adrian Reber <adrian@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrei Vagin <avagin@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andrei Vagin <avagin@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Andy Tucker <agtucker@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dmitry Safonov <0x7f454c46@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jeff Dike <jdike@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Shuah Khan <shuah@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: containers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: criu@xxxxxxxxxx
Cc: linux-api@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: x86@xxxxxxxxxx

Andrei Vagin (15):
ns: Introduce Time Namespace
timens: Add timens_offsets
timens: Introduce CLOCK_MONOTONIC offsets
timens: Introduce CLOCK_BOOTTIME offset
timerfd/timens: Take into account ns clock offsets
posix-timers/timens: Take into account clock offsets
timens/kernel: Take into account timens clock offsets in
clock_nanosleep
x86/vdso/timens: Add offsets page in vvar
timens/fs/proc: Introduce /proc/pid/timens_offsets
selftest/timens: Add a test for timerfd
selftest/timens: Add a test for clock_nanosleep()
selftest/timens: Add timer offsets test
selftests: Add a simple perf test for clock_gettime()
selftest/timens: Check that a right vdso is mapped after fork and exec
x86/vdso: Align VDSO functions by CPU L1 cache line

Dmitry Safonov (17):
timens: Shift /proc/uptime
x86/vdso2c: Correct err messages on file opening
x86/vdso2c: Convert iterator to unsigned
x86/vdso/Makefile: Add vobjs32
x86/vdso: Build timens .so(s)
x86/VDSO: Build VDSO with -ffunction-sections
x86/vdso2c: Optionally produce linker script for vdso entries
x86/vdso: Generate vdso{,32}-timens.lds
x86/vdso2c: Sort vdso entries by addresses for linker script
x86/vdso.lds: Align !timens (host's) vdso.so entries
x86/vdso2c: Align LOCAL symbols between vdso{-timens,}.so
x86/vdso: Initialize timens 64-bit vdso
x86/vdso: Switch image on setns()/unshare()/clone()
timens: Add align for timens_offsets
selftest/timens: Add Time Namespace test for supported clocks
selftest/timens: Add procfs selftest
x86/vdso: Restrict splitting VVAR VMA

MAINTAINERS | 3 +
arch/Kconfig | 5 +
arch/x86/Kconfig | 1 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/.gitignore | 2 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/Makefile | 61 ++-
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vclock_gettime-timens.c | 6 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vclock_gettime.c | 42 +++
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso-layout.lds.S | 21 +-
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso-timens.lds.S | 7 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso2c.c | 46 ++-
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso2c.h | 52 ++-
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/.gitignore | 1 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/sigreturn.S | 2 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/system_call.S | 2 +-
.../entry/vdso/vdso32/vclock_gettime-timens.c | 6 +
.../x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/vdso32-timens.lds.S | 8 +
arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c | 110 ++++++
arch/x86/include/asm/vdso.h | 8 +
fs/proc/base.c | 101 +++++
fs/proc/namespaces.c | 4 +
fs/proc/uptime.c | 3 +
fs/timerfd.c | 16 +-
include/linux/nsproxy.h | 2 +
include/linux/proc_ns.h | 2 +
include/linux/time_namespace.h | 91 +++++
include/linux/timens_offsets.h | 18 +
include/linux/user_namespace.h | 1 +
include/uapi/linux/sched.h | 1 +
init/Kconfig | 8 +
kernel/Makefile | 1 +
kernel/fork.c | 3 +-
kernel/nsproxy.c | 41 ++-
kernel/time/hrtimer.c | 8 +
kernel/time/posix-timers.c | 24 +-
kernel/time/posix-timers.h | 1 +
kernel/time_namespace.c | 348 ++++++++++++++++++
tools/testing/selftests/Makefile | 1 +
tools/testing/selftests/timens/.gitignore | 7 +
tools/testing/selftests/timens/Makefile | 12 +
.../selftests/timens/clock_nanosleep.c | 99 +++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/config | 1 +
tools/testing/selftests/timens/exec.c | 91 +++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/gettime_perf.c | 74 ++++
.../selftests/timens/gettime_perf_cold.c | 63 ++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/log.h | 26 ++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/procfs.c | 142 +++++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/timens.c | 191 ++++++++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/timens.h | 63 ++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/timer.c | 115 ++++++
tools/testing/selftests/timens/timerfd.c | 119 ++++++
50 files changed, 2008 insertions(+), 52 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 arch/x86/entry/vdso/vclock_gettime-timens.c
create mode 100644 arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso-timens.lds.S
create mode 100644 arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/vclock_gettime-timens.c
create mode 100644 arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso32/vdso32-timens.lds.S
create mode 100644 include/linux/time_namespace.h
create mode 100644 include/linux/timens_offsets.h
create mode 100644 kernel/time_namespace.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/.gitignore
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/Makefile
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/clock_nanosleep.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/config
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/exec.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/gettime_perf.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/gettime_perf_cold.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/log.h
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/procfs.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/timens.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/timens.h
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/timer.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/timens/timerfd.c

--
2.20.1