Re: [PATCH 1/2] mm/slub: Introduce two counters for the partial objects

[Pekka Enberg]

Hi Christopher,

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 3:52 PM Christopher Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 7 Aug 2020, Pekka Enberg wrote:
>
> > Why do you consider this to be a fast path? This is all partial list
> > accounting when we allocate/deallocate a slab, no? Just like
> > ___slab_alloc() says, I assumed this to be the slow path... What am I
> > missing?
>
> I thought these were per object counters? If you just want to count the
> number of slabs then you do not need the lock at all. We already have a
> counter for the number of slabs.

The patch attempts to speed up count_partial(), which holds on to the
"n->list_lock" (with IRQs off) for the whole duration it takes to walk
the partial slab list:

        spin_lock_irqsave(&n->list_lock, flags);
        list_for_each_entry(page, &n->partial, slab_list)
                x += get_count(page);
        spin_unlock_irqrestore(&n->list_lock, flags);

It's counting the number of *objects*, but the counters are only
updated in bulk when we add/remove a slab to/from the partial list.
The counter updates are therefore *not* in the fast-path AFAICT.

Xunlei, please correct me if I'm reading your patches wrong.

On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 3:52 PM Christopher Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > No objections to alternative fixes, of course, but wrapping the
> > counters under CONFIG_DEBUG seems like just hiding the actual issue...
>
> CONFIG_DEBUG is on by default. It just compiles in the debug code and
> disables it so we can enable it with a kernel boot option. This is because
> we have had numerous issues in the past with "production" kernels that
> could not be recompiled with debug options. So just running the prod
> kernel with another option will allow you to find hard to debug issues in
> a full scale producton deployment with potentially proprietary modules
> etc.

Yeah, it's been too long since I last looked at the code and did not
realize even count_partial() is wrapped in CONFIG_DEBUG. So by all
means, let's also wrap the counters with that too.

- Pekka