[PATCH 0/4] Replace CONFIG_DMABUF_SYSFS_STATS with BPF

From: T.J. Mercier
Date: Mon Apr 14 2025 - 18:53:04 EST


Until CONFIG_DMABUF_SYSFS_STATS was added [1] it was only possible to
perform per-buffer accounting with debugfs which is not suitable for
production environments. Eventually we discovered the overhead with
per-buffer sysfs file creation/removal was significantly impacting
allocation and free times, and exacerbated kernfs lock contention. [2]
dma_buf_stats_setup() is responsible for 39% of single-page buffer
creation duration, or 74% of single-page dma_buf_export() duration when
stressing dmabuf allocations and frees.

I prototyped a change from per-buffer to per-exporter statistics with a
RCU protected list of exporter allocations that accommodates most (but
not all) of our use-cases and avoids almost all of the sysfs overhead.
While that adds less overhead than per-buffer sysfs, and less even than
the maintenance of the dmabuf debugfs_list, it's still *additional*
overhead on top of the debugfs_list and doesn't give us per-buffer info.

This series uses the existing dmabuf debugfs_list to implement a BPF
dmabuf iterator, which adds no overhead to buffer allocation/free and
provides per-buffer info. While the kernel must have CONFIG_DEBUG_FS for
the dmabuf_iter to be available, debugfs does not need to be mounted.
The BPF program loaded by userspace that extracts per-buffer information
gets to define its own interface which avoids the lack of ABI stability
with debugfs (even if it were mounted).

As this is a replacement for our use of CONFIG_DMABUF_SYSFS_STATS, the
last patch is a RFC for removing it from the kernel. Please see my
suggestion there regarding the timeline for that.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-media/20201210044400.1080308-1-hridya@xxxxxxxxxx/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220516171315.2400578-1-tjmercier@xxxxxxxxxx/

T.J. Mercier (4):
dma-buf: Rename and expose debugfs symbols
bpf: Add dmabuf iterator
selftests/bpf: Add test for dmabuf_iter
RFC: dma-buf: Remove DMA-BUF statistics

.../ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-dmabuf-buffers | 24 ---
Documentation/driver-api/dma-buf.rst | 5 -
drivers/dma-buf/Kconfig | 15 --
drivers/dma-buf/Makefile | 1 -
drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf-sysfs-stats.c | 202 ------------------
drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf-sysfs-stats.h | 35 ---
drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf.c | 40 +---
include/linux/btf_ids.h | 1 +
include/linux/dma-buf.h | 6 +
kernel/bpf/Makefile | 3 +
kernel/bpf/dmabuf_iter.c | 130 +++++++++++
tools/testing/selftests/bpf/config | 1 +
.../selftests/bpf/prog_tests/dmabuf_iter.c | 116 ++++++++++
.../testing/selftests/bpf/progs/dmabuf_iter.c | 31 +++
14 files changed, 299 insertions(+), 311 deletions(-)
delete mode 100644 Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-dmabuf-buffers
delete mode 100644 drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf-sysfs-stats.c
delete mode 100644 drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf-sysfs-stats.h
create mode 100644 kernel/bpf/dmabuf_iter.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/dmabuf_iter.c
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/bpf/progs/dmabuf_iter.c

--
2.49.0.604.gff1f9ca942-goog