Re: [PATCH 2/2] module: add support to avoid duplicates early on load
From: Lucas De Marchi
Date: Tue May 30 2023 - 13:16:37 EST
On Tue, May 30, 2023 at 09:22:14AM -0700, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 09:55:15PM -0400, Linus Torvalds wrote:
On Mon, May 29, 2023 at 11:18 AM Johan Hovold <johan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I took a closer look at some of the modules that failed to load and
> noticed a pattern in that they have dependencies that are needed by more
> than one device.
Ok, this is a "maybe something like this" RFC series of two patches -
one trivial one to re-organize things a bit so that we can then do the
real one which uses a filter based on the inode pointer to return an
"idempotent return value" for module loads that share the same inode.
It's entirely untested, and since I'm on the road I'm going to not
really be able to test it. It compiles for me, and the code looks
fairly straightforward, but it's probably buggy.
It's very loosely based on Luis' attempt, but it
(a) is internal to module loading
(b) uses a reliable cookie
(c) doesn't leave the cookie around randomly for later
(d) has seen absolutely no testing
Put another way: if somebody wants to play with this, please treat it
as a starting point, not the final thing. You might need to debug
things, and fix silly mistakes.
The idea is to just have a simple hash list of currently executing
module loads, protected by a trivial spinlock. Every module loader
adds itself to the right hash list, and if they were the *first* one
(ie no other pending module loads for that inode), will actually do
the module load.
Everybody who *isn't* the first one will just wait for completion and
return the same error code that the first one returned.
That's also a hell much more snazzier MODULE_DEBUG_AUTOLOAD_DUPS if we
ever wanted to do something similar there if we wanted to also
join request_module() calls, instead of it hiding under debug.
This is technically bogus. The first one might fail due to arguments.
For boot it's fine, as I can't think of boot wanting to support trying
to load a module with different arguments but who knows. But I can't
see it sensible to issue concurrent multiple requests for modules
with different arguments without waiting in userspace for the first
to fail.
Even post-boot, doing that sounds rather insane, but it would certainly
be a compromise and should probably be clearly documented. I think just
a comment acknolwedging that corner case seems sensible.
Because we won't be able to get the arguments until we process the
module, so it would be too late for this optimization on kread. So it is
why I had also stuck to the original feature being in kread, as then it
provides a uniq kread call and the caller is aware of it. But indeed I
had not considered the effects of arguments.
Lucas, any thoughts from modules kmod userspace perspective into
supporting anyone likely issuing concurrent modules requests with
differing arguments?
Changing module params like that without first explicitly removing the
module was never supported by kmod or module-init-tools (I'm not digging
the history before 2.6 kernel)
During boot, note there is already a shortcut
if we have the sysfs node already in the "live" state or if the module is
built-in. In that case we will return success or -EEXIST (if the
KMOD_PROBE_IGNORE_LOADED flag was passed). To be 100% equivalent when
covering the window between the first finit_module() and the sysfs node
being created, then we could add a similar flag to finit_module() and
return -EEXIST. Note however that likbmod will already clear the error
when no flag is passed, which is the normal case during boot.
The only scenario I can think of during boot in which the module params
could change would be when a buggy initrd is created, i.e.
/etc/modprobed.d/*.conf is in the rootfs but absent from initrd.
So returning the same error code seems good to me.
thanks
Lucas De Marchi
So the cookie shouldn't be just the inode, it should be the inode and
a hash of the arguments or something like that.
Personally I think it's a fine optimization without the arguments.
But it is what it is,
and apart from possible show-stopper bugs this is no worse than the
failed "exclusive write deny" attempt. IOW - maybe worth trying?
The only thing I can think of is allowing threads other than the
first one to complete before the one that actually loaded the
module. I thought about this race for module auto-loading, see
the comment in kmod_dup_request_announce(), so that just
further delays the completion to other thread with a stupid
queue_work(). That seems more important for module auto-loading
duplicates than for boot finit_module() duplicates. But not sure
if odering matters in the end due to a preemtible kernel and maybe
that concern is hysteria.
And if *that* didn't sell people on this patch series, I don't know
what will. I should be in marketing! Two drink minimums, here I come!
Sold:
on 255 vcpus 0 duplicates found with this setup:
root@kmod ~ # cat /sys/kernel/debug/modules/stats
Mods ever loaded 66
Mods failed on kread 0
Mods failed on decompress 0
Mods failed on becoming 0
Mods failed on load 0
Total module size 11268096
Total mod text size 4149248
Failed kread bytes 0
Failed decompress bytes 0
Failed becoming bytes 0
Failed kmod bytes 0
Virtual mem wasted bytes 0
Average mod size 170729
Average mod text size 62868
So:
Tested-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@xxxxxxxxxx>
In terms of bootup timing:
Before:
Startup finished in 41.653s (kernel) + 44.305s (userspace) = 1min 25.958s
graphical.target reached after 44.178s in userspace.
After:
Startup finished in 23.995s (kernel) + 40.350s (userspace) = 1min 4.345s
graphical.target reached after 40.226s in userspace.
So other than the brain farts above, I think this is pretty sexy.
Luis