Re: [PATCH 5/5] selftests/bpf: a simple benchmark tool for /proc/<pid>/maps APIs

[Andrii Nakryiko <andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com>]

On Tue, May 7, 2024 at 8:49 AM Liam R. Howlett <Liam.Howlett@oracle.com> wrote:
>
> .. Adding Suren & Willy to the Cc
>
> * Andrii Nakryiko <andrii.nakryiko@gmail.com> [240504 18:14]:
> > On Sat, May 4, 2024 at 8:32 AM Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Fri, May 03, 2024 at 05:30:06PM -0700, Andrii Nakryiko wrote:
> > > > I also did an strace run of both cases. In text-based one the tool did
> > > > 68 read() syscalls, fetching up to 4KB of data in one go.
> > >
> > > Why not fetch more at once?
> > >
> >
> > I didn't expect to be interrogated so much on the performance of the
> > text parsing front, sorry. :) You can probably tune this, but where is
> > the reasonable limit? 64KB? 256KB? 1MB? See below for some more
> > production numbers.
>
> The reason the file reads are limited to 4KB is because this file is
> used for monitoring processes.  We have a significant number of
> organisations polling this file so frequently that the mmap lock
> contention becomes an issue. (reading a file is free, right?)  People
> also tend to try to figure out why a process is slow by reading this
> file - which amplifies the lock contention.
>
> What happens today is that the lock is yielded after 4KB to allow time
> for mmap writes to happen.  This also means your data may be
> inconsistent from one 4KB block to the next (the write may be around
> this boundary).
>
> This new interface also takes the lock in do_procmap_query() and does
> the 4kb blocks as well.  Extending this size means more time spent
> blocking mmap writes, but a more consistent view of the world (less
> "tearing" of the addresses).

Hold on. There is no 4KB in the new ioctl-based API I'm adding. It
does a single VMA look up (presumably O(logN) operation) using a
single vma_iter_init(addr) + vma_next() call on vma_iterator.

As for the mmap_read_lock_killable() (is that what we are talking
about?), I'm happy to use anything else available, please give me a
pointer. But I suspect given how fast and small this new API is,
mmap_read_lock_killable() in it is not comparable to holding it for
producing /proc/<pid>/maps contents.

>
> We are working to reduce these issues by switching the /proc/<pid>/maps
> file to use rcu lookup.  I would recommend we do not proceed with this
> interface using the old method and instead, implement it using rcu from
> the start - if it fits your use case (or we can make it fit your use
> case).
>
> At least, for most page faults, we can work around the lock contention
> (since v6.6), but not all and not on all archs.
>
> ...
>
> >
> > > > In comparison,
> > > > ioctl-based implementation had to do only 6 ioctl() calls to fetch all
> > > > relevant VMAs.
> > > >
> > > > It is projected that savings from processing big production applications
> > > > would only widen the gap in favor of binary-based querying ioctl API, as
> > > > bigger applications will tend to have even more non-executable VMA
> > > > mappings relative to executable ones.
> > >
> > > Define "bigger applications" please.  Is this some "large database
> > > company workload" type of thing, or something else?
> >
> > I don't have a definition. But I had in mind, as one example, an
> > ads-serving service we use internally (it's a pretty large application
> > by pretty much any metric you can come up with). I just randomly
> > picked one of the production hosts, found one instance of that
> > service, and looked at its /proc/<pid>/maps file. Hopefully it will
> > satisfy your need for specifics.
> >
> > # cat /proc/1126243/maps | wc -c
> > 1570178
> > # cat /proc/1126243/maps | wc -l
> > 28875
> > # cat /proc/1126243/maps | grep ' ..x. ' | wc -l
> > 7347
>
> We have distributions increasing the map_count to an insane number to
> allow games to work [1].  It is, unfortunately, only a matter of time until
> this is regularly an issue as it is being normalised and allowed by an
> increased number of distributions (fedora, arch, ubuntu).  So, despite
> my email address, I am not talking about large database companies here.
>
> Also, note that applications that use guard VMAs double the number for
> the guards.  Fun stuff.
>
> We are really doing a lot in the VMA area to reduce the mmap locking
> contention and it seems you have a use case for a new interface that can
> leverage these changes.
>
> We have at least two talks around this area at LSF if you are attending.

I am attending LSFMM, yes, I'll try to not miss them.

>
> Thanks,
> Liam
>
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/8f6e2d69-b4df-45f3-aed4-5190966e2dea@valvesoftware.com/
>