Re: [PATCH v9 3/3] mm: add anonymous vma name refcounting

[Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>]

On Thu, Sep 02, 2021 at 04:18:13PM -0700, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> While forking a process with high number (64K) of named anonymous vmas the
> overhead caused by strdup() is noticeable. Experiments with ARM64 Android
> device show up to 40% performance regression when forking a process with
> 64k unpopulated anonymous vmas using the max name lengths vs the same
> process with the same number of anonymous vmas having no name.
> Introduce anon_vma_name refcounted structure to avoid the overhead of
> copying vma names during fork() and when splitting named anonymous vmas.
> When a vma is duplicated, instead of copying the name we increment the
> refcount of this structure. Multiple vmas can point to the same
> anon_vma_name as long as they increment the refcount. The name member of
> anon_vma_name structure is assigned at structure allocation time and is
> never changed. If vma name changes then the refcount of the original
> structure is dropped, a new anon_vma_name structure is allocated
> to hold the new name and the vma pointer is updated to point to the new
> structure.
> With this approach the fork() performance regressions is reduced 3-4x
> times and with usecases using more reasonable number of VMAs (a few
> thousand) the regressions is not measurable.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
> ---
> previous version including cover letter with test results is at:
> https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20210827191858.2037087-1-surenb@google.com/
> 
> changes in v9
> - Replaced kzalloc with kmalloc in anon_vma_name_alloc, per Rolf Eike Beer
> 
>  include/linux/mm_types.h |  9 ++++++++-
>  mm/madvise.c             | 43 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------
>  2 files changed, 44 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/mm_types.h b/include/linux/mm_types.h
> index 968a1d0463d8..7feb43daee6c 100644
> --- a/include/linux/mm_types.h
> +++ b/include/linux/mm_types.h
> @@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
>  #include <linux/mm_types_task.h>
>  
>  #include <linux/auxvec.h>
> +#include <linux/kref.h>
>  #include <linux/list.h>
>  #include <linux/spinlock.h>
>  #include <linux/rbtree.h>
> @@ -310,6 +311,12 @@ struct vm_userfaultfd_ctx {
>  struct vm_userfaultfd_ctx {};
>  #endif /* CONFIG_USERFAULTFD */
>  
> +struct anon_vma_name {
> +	struct kref kref;
> +	/* The name needs to be at the end because it is dynamically sized. */
> +	char name[];
> +};
> +
>  /*
>   * This struct describes a virtual memory area. There is one of these
>   * per VM-area/task. A VM area is any part of the process virtual memory
> @@ -361,7 +368,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct {
>  			unsigned long rb_subtree_last;
>  		} shared;
>  		/* Serialized by mmap_sem. */
> -		char *anon_name;
> +		struct anon_vma_name *anon_name;
>  	};
>  
>  	/*
> diff --git a/mm/madvise.c b/mm/madvise.c
> index 0c6d0f64d432..adc53edd3fe7 100644
> --- a/mm/madvise.c
> +++ b/mm/madvise.c
> @@ -63,6 +63,28 @@ static int madvise_need_mmap_write(int behavior)
>  	}
>  }
>  
> +static struct anon_vma_name *anon_vma_name_alloc(const char *name)
> +{
> +	struct anon_vma_name *anon_name;
> +	size_t len = strlen(name);
> +
> +	/* Add 1 for NUL terminator at the end of the anon_name->name */
> +	anon_name = kmalloc(sizeof(*anon_name) + len + 1, GFP_KERNEL);
> +	if (anon_name) {
> +		kref_init(&anon_name->kref);
> +		strcpy(anon_name->name, name);

Please don't use strcpy(), even though we know it's safe here. We're
trying to remove it globally (or at least for non-constant buffers)[1].
We can also use the struct_size() helper, along with memcpy():

	/* Add 1 for NUL terminator at the end of the anon_name->name */
	size_t count = strlen(name) + 1;

	anon_name = kmalloc(struct_size(anon_name, name, count), GFP_KERNEL);
	if (anon_name) {
		kref_init(&anon_name->kref);
		memcpy(anon_name->name, name, count);
	}

[1] https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/deprecated.html#strcpy

> +	}
> +
> +	return anon_name;
> +}
> +
> +static void vma_anon_name_free(struct kref *kref)
> +{
> +	struct anon_vma_name *anon_name =
> +			container_of(kref, struct anon_vma_name, kref);
> +	kfree(anon_name);
> +}
> +
>  static inline bool has_vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
>  {
>  	return !vma->vm_file && vma->anon_name;
> @@ -75,7 +97,7 @@ const char *vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
>  
>  	mmap_assert_locked(vma->vm_mm);
>  
> -	return vma->anon_name;
> +	return vma->anon_name->name;
>  }
>  
>  void dup_vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *orig_vma,
> @@ -84,37 +106,44 @@ void dup_vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *orig_vma,
>  	if (!has_vma_anon_name(orig_vma))
>  		return;
>  
> -	new_vma->anon_name = kstrdup(orig_vma->anon_name, GFP_KERNEL);
> +	kref_get(&orig_vma->anon_name->kref);
> +	new_vma->anon_name = orig_vma->anon_name;
>  }
>  
>  void free_vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
>  {
> +	struct anon_vma_name *anon_name;
> +
>  	if (!has_vma_anon_name(vma))
>  		return;
>  
> -	kfree(vma->anon_name);
> +	anon_name = vma->anon_name;
>  	vma->anon_name = NULL;
> +	kref_put(&anon_name->kref, vma_anon_name_free);
>  }
>  
>  /* mmap_lock should be write-locked */
>  static int replace_vma_anon_name(struct vm_area_struct *vma, const char *name)
>  {
> +	const char *anon_name;
> +
>  	if (!name) {
>  		free_vma_anon_name(vma);
>  		return 0;
>  	}
>  
> -	if (vma->anon_name) {
> +	anon_name = vma_anon_name(vma);
> +	if (anon_name) {
>  		/* Should never happen, to dup use dup_vma_anon_name() */
> -		WARN_ON(vma->anon_name == name);
> +		WARN_ON(anon_name == name);
>  
>  		/* Same name, nothing to do here */
> -		if (!strcmp(name, vma->anon_name))
> +		if (!strcmp(name, anon_name))
>  			return 0;
>  
>  		free_vma_anon_name(vma);
>  	}
> -	vma->anon_name = kstrdup(name, GFP_KERNEL);
> +	vma->anon_name = anon_vma_name_alloc(name);
>  	if (!vma->anon_name)
>  		return -ENOMEM;
>  
> -- 
> 2.33.0.153.gba50c8fa24-goog
> 

With the above tweak, please consider this:

Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

Thanks for working on this!

-- 
Kees Cook