Re: [PATCH] KFENCE: Clarify that sample allocations are not following NUMA or memory policies

[Yang Shi]

On Thu, Jan 23, 2025 at 2:44 PM Christoph Lameter via B4 Relay
<devnull+cl.gentwo.org@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> From: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> KFENCE manages its own pools and redirects regular memory allocations
> to those pools in a sporadic way. The usual memory allocator features
> like NUMA, memory policies and pfmemalloc are not supported.
> This means that one gets surprising object placement with KFENCE that
> may impact performance on some NUMA systems.
>
> Update the description and make KFENCE depend on VM debugging
> having been enabled.
>
> Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst |  4 +++-
>  lib/Kconfig.kfence                 | 10 ++++++----
>  2 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst
> index 541899353865..27150780d6f5 100644
> --- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst
> +++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst
> @@ -8,7 +8,9 @@ Kernel Electric-Fence (KFENCE) is a low-overhead sampling-based memory safety
>  error detector. KFENCE detects heap out-of-bounds access, use-after-free, and
>  invalid-free errors.
>
> -KFENCE is designed to be enabled in production kernels, and has near zero
> +KFENCE is designed to be low overhead but does not implememnt the typical

s/implememnt/implement

> +memory allocation features for its samples like memory policies, NUMA and
> +management of emergency memory pools. It has near zero
>  performance overhead. Compared to KASAN, KFENCE trades performance for
>  precision. The main motivation behind KFENCE's design, is that with enough
>  total uptime KFENCE will detect bugs in code paths not typically exercised by
> diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kfence b/lib/Kconfig.kfence
> index 6fbbebec683a..48d2a6a1be08 100644
> --- a/lib/Kconfig.kfence
> +++ b/lib/Kconfig.kfence
> @@ -5,14 +5,14 @@ config HAVE_ARCH_KFENCE
>
>  menuconfig KFENCE
>         bool "KFENCE: low-overhead sampling-based memory safety error detector"
> -       depends on HAVE_ARCH_KFENCE
> +       depends on HAVE_ARCH_KFENCE && DEBUG_VM

Not sure whether it should depend on DEBUG_VM or not, but the update
about not honoring NUMA policy makes sense to me.

Reviewed-by: Yang Shi <yang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>         select STACKTRACE
>         select IRQ_WORK
>         help
>           KFENCE is a low-overhead sampling-based detector of heap out-of-bounds
>           access, use-after-free, and invalid-free errors. KFENCE is designed
> -         to have negligible cost to permit enabling it in production
> -         environments.
> +         to have negligible cost. KFENCE does not support NUMA features
> +         and other memory allocator features for it sample allocations.
>
>           See <file:Documentation/dev-tools/kfence.rst> for more details.
>
> @@ -21,7 +21,9 @@ menuconfig KFENCE
>           detect, albeit at very different performance profiles. If you can
>           afford to use KASAN, continue using KASAN, for example in test
>           environments. If your kernel targets production use, and cannot
> -         enable KASAN due to its cost, consider using KFENCE.
> +         enable KASAN due to its cost and you are not using NUMA and have
> +         no use of the memory reserve logic of the memory allocators,
> +         consider using KFENCE.
>
>  if KFENCE
>
>
> ---
> base-commit: d0d106a2bd21499901299160744e5fe9f4c83ddb
> change-id: 20250123-kfence_doc_update-93b4576c25bb
>
> Best regards,
> --
> Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
>