On 1/13/24 16:16, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
On Sat, Jan 13, 2024 at 8:28 PM Mirsad Todorovac
<mirsad.todorovac@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 1/13/24 06:40, Masahiro Yamada wrote:
On Fri, Jan 12, 2024 at 7:48 AM Mirsad Todorovac
<mirsad.todorovac@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 11. 01. 2024. 16:37, Nicolas Schier wrote:
Hi Mirsad,
On Thu 11 Jan 2024 13:22:39 GMT, Mirsad Todorovac wrote:
Hi,
With this new release, it seems that Debian kernel build uses "xz" in single-
threaded mode:
Hi, Masahiro,
Thank you for your reply.
New release of what?
Forgive me for not being precise. It was the new release of torvalds tree mainline
kernel 6.7+ (with merge commits up-to-date). I sort of mistakenly assumed that
I wrote it, but it was declared in some mail on LKML.
When you report a regression in the kernel code in the future,
please try to do "git bisect" and pin-point an offending commit.
That is more helpful to figure out how to fix the issue.
And, you will be sure whether or not the root cause exists
in the kernel.
Good point. Thanks.
But I did not notice any regression on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system, and neither on
the Ubuntu 22.10 Mantic system which was upgraded. So I assumed it was not related to
particular commit, and I did not think of bisect.
One environment was Ubuntu 23.10 Mantic Minotaur on the desktop at work.
The laptop also has Mantic Minotaur, but for some reason it spawns multithreaded
dpkg-deb when building packages, unlike desktop which spawned single-threaded "xz".
This is at least what the "top" displayed when turning on "H" (show threads).
On one system (upgraded 23.10 from 22.04 LTS) the same dpkg-deb shows as multi-threaded
dpkg-deb, while on the other it calls xz which didn't respect XT_OPT=-T0 (visible
from the copy+paste from top output).
I am perplexed myself.
Tasks: 484 total, 2 running, 481 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
%Cpu(s): 2.5 us, 2.2 sy, 6.3 ni, 85.1 id, 2.3 wa, 0.0 hi, 1.7 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 64128.3 total, 524.3 free, 5832.0 used, 58540.9 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 32760.0 total, 32758.7 free, 1.2 used. 58296.3 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+
COMMAND
978084 marvin 30 10 112440 97792 2432 R 100.0 0.1 29:30.23 xz
Before dpkg-deb was using up to 3200% of CPU time on a 16 core SMT CPU.
Can it be something with dpkg-deb --thread-max=%n option?
I cannot find any --thread-max option in Linux tree. Do you call
dpkg-deb manually or somehow induce a thread maximum?
Waiting for half an hour just for the build of linux-image-...-dbg package
seems like an overkill ...
With current v6.7 release tree I do not see the reported slow-downs
when building bindeb-pkg; I tested by cross-compiling for arm64 on
amd64 with CONFIG_MODULE_COMPRESS_XZ=y and =n).
Both take roughly 5mins on my 24-core i9 system.
Kind regards,
Nicolas
I am perplexed too, but you can see from the top output the
single-threaded xz with 29:30m processor time.
On my laptop with the sam Ubuntu 23.10 mantic minotaur, I have
dpkg-deb version 1.20.12 and it shows things like 400% and 3200%
CPU time, so it is working multithreaded.
On desktop machine with the same Ubuntu 23.10 and the same git
torvalds tree, it starts single-threaded xz from dpkg-deb instead.
You built the same mainline git tree on your laptop and desktop.
The former runs xz multi-threaded, the latter single-threaded.
So, this is not about the kernel code, but about your environment,
isn't it?
It should be. Somehow it doesn't behave rationally. To be true to the facts,
one is 23.10 Mantic Minotaur upgraded from 22.04 LTS, and the other is
fresh Mantic from install.
You mentioned you were using Ubuntu 23.10, where
dpkg-deb version is 1.22.0
This is correct.
Your dpkg-deb version, 1.20.12, is too old for Ubuntu 23.10.
Is it a self-built one?
Yes, it is the build from Debian 11 source package.
This had the similar rationale because Ubuntu version ran single-threaded.
dpkg-deb from Debian 11 source package worked well for months.
dpkg-deb usually compresses binary packages, but the default
compression type depends on the distro.
(It is determined at "./configure" time)
I see. But the home-built dpkg-deb also resorted to running "xz", and
xz did not recognise XZ_OPT environment variable. Very odd. :-/
It depends on the environment whether or not dpkg-deb
spawns the external 'xz' command.
With WITH_LIBLZMA defined, dpkg-deb uses internal code
to compress the data with xz. [1]
Without WITH_LIBLZMA, dpkg-deb sparns "xz" processes. [2]
[1]: https://salsa.debian.org/dpkg-team/dpkg/-/blob/1.20.12/lib/dpkg/compress.c?ref_type=tags#L412
[2]: https://salsa.debian.org/dpkg-team/dpkg/-/blob/1.20.12/lib/dpkg/compress.c?ref_type=tags#L663
Since you said you saw "xz" in the "ps" command output,
I believe your case is the latter.
Thanks for your insight. It is obviously a compile-time define.
In previous build the defaults were apparently different. The Debian defaulting to multi-threaded
dpkg-deb was the exact reason why I did the hand build in the first place.
In the long run, it saved an awful lot of time.
But I can't see the logic of enforcing the single-threaded "xz" from dpkg-deg :-/
When dpkg-deb swarns the external "xz" command,
dpkg-deb unsets "XZ_OPT". [3]
I believe that's why you do not see XZ_OPT propagated.
[3]: https://salsa.debian.org/dpkg-team/dpkg/-/blob/1.20.12/lib/dpkg/compress.c?ref_type=tags#L643
Your insight really casts light on this. Now it is very clear.
But IMHO single-threaded 30-min xz compression on a 16-core or 32-SMT machine is kind of weird.
I wish there was something we could do about it.
The same happened with the rpmbuild with similar defaults on Fedora. :-(
On Ubuntu, the default compression type for dpkg-deb is "zstd"
(while it is "xz" on Debian)
Check "man dpkg-deb" on your Ubuntu machine.
-Zcompress‐type
Specify which compression type to use when building a package.
Allowed values are gzip, xz (since dpkg 1.15.6),
zstd (since dpkg 1.21.18) and none (default is zstd).
Verified. "man dpkg-deb" confirms that.
You are still allowed to use xz with "make KDEB_COMPRESS=xz deb-pkg".
Is this your case?
Somehow, my Mantic's "xz" did not react to the environment variables. Maybe it is
enchanted? :-/
Overall, your report is not sensible.
You should check what you are seeing.
I was seeing exactly what I copy+pasted (top output). Give me the benefit of doubt
that I did not falsify copy+paste. Ideally, I should have submitted JPG terminal
screenshot.
Home-built dpkg-deb worked well on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and 23.10 (upgraded from 22.04).
So it was a surprise that it started showing quirks on this new box with fresh 23.10
from .iso.
But I am only 16 months in the Linux kernel development, so it is probably my fault.
I saw from the output of "ps xewww" that "xz" had "XZ_OPT=-T0", but it refused to obey
the environment variable.
This is probably worth digging and delving into to find the culprit, but eventually the
workaround was the script manually prepending "--threads=0" to the parameter list and
calling system xz:
/usr/bin/xz --threads=0 "$@"
Certainly, I need to establish "normality" before building complex kernels and applying
patches or the results will be non-reproducible and useless.
I did the background search on your valuable contributions to the LK, but as we have this
problem with the vanilla installation of Ubuntu, maybe we can think of something to
optimise the LK build time?
I do not think so.
There already exists a solution to control the number of threads.
See "man dpkg-deb"
DPKG_DEB_THREADS_MAX
Sets the maximum number of threads allowed for compressors that
support multi‐threaded operations (since dpkg 1.21.9).
The --threads-max option overrides this value.
By setting this env variable, you should be able to control the multi-threading.
However, your dpkg-deb is 1.20.12, so you need to use a newer version.
You locally hacked builddeb to add --threads-max, but it does not
work for you for the same reason; it requires dpkg 1.21.9+
--threads-max=threads
Sets the maximum number of threads allowed for compressors that support
multi‐threaded operations (since dpkg 1.21.9).
Why do you stick to the old home-built dpkg-deb?
If you use the default dpkg-deb bundled with Ubuntu 23.10,
you will have a better experience.
Yes, but I did it because Ubuntu dpkg-deb was single-threaded by default. I did not
know so many kbuild options at the time ...
Or, if you still insist on a home-built dpkg-deb,
why don't you build a newer version?
That's a good idea. But with Debian defaults, I suppose :-)
Thank you for all your insight you provided, it really cleared a lot of dubious things.
Except that I thought I saw "XZ_OPT=-T0" in "ps xewww" environment listing of the xz
process itself. But right now I cannot access that box until Monday, so I rest my case.
IMHO, the build process should have optimal defaults. This would eventually reduce the
load on the kbuild developers and maintainers, and increase overall user satisfaction.
I will do what it takes, but for the real Linux newbies maybe it would be more user-friendly
to have the build system use all the cores out-of-the-box. But maybe not.
There might be some cons to this, dunno. This way it is certainly more mystery ;-)
Thanks again, and have a blessed weekend!
Best regards,
Mirsad
To recall better from Thursday, I actually tried to prepend "XZ_OPT=--threads=0" to
system xz, and it worked. But when called from dpkg-deb, it suddenly got amnesia, despite
XZ_OPT=-T0 being seen in "ps xewww" output :-/
I believe there should be a rational explanation rather than black or red magic.
Thank you again for considering this problem report and have a nice weekend!
Best regards,
Mirsad Todorovac
I tried things like this:
diff --git a/scripts/package/builddeb b/scripts/package/builddeb
index d7dd0d04c70c..b2319c23db34 100755
--- a/scripts/package/builddeb
+++ b/scripts/package/builddeb
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ create_package() {
# Fix ownership and permissions
if [ "$DEB_RULES_REQUIRES_ROOT" = "no" ]; then
- dpkg_deb_opts="--root-owner-group"
+ dpkg_deb_opts="--threads-max=0 --root-owner-group"
else
chown -R root:root "$pdir"
fi
and it didn't work either - dpkg-deb --threads-max=0 still spawned a
single-threaded xz that ran 30 minutes.
Then the workaround was a very simple xz shell script that adds option --threads=0
and calls system xz:
~/bin/xz:
----------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/bash -f
/usr/bin/xz --threads=0 "$@"
----------------------------------------------------------------
This finally worked, but sometimes I get:
marvin@defiant:~/linux/kernel$ xz -9 --memlimit-compress=8000MiB linux-image-6.7.0-rc8-dbg_6.7.0-rc8-6_amd64.deb
/usr/bin/xz: Reduced the number of threads from 8 to 6 to not exceed the memory usage limit of 8000 MiB
(This is of course just an example of compressing a large file, as .deb is already compressed.)
I used the default Ubuntu 23.10 config, with .pems excluded, and I think module compression
did not work either. I had to turn it off ...
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Mirsad
--
Mirsad Goran Todorovac
Sistem inženjer
Grafički fakultet | Akademija likovnih umjetnosti
Sveučilište u Zagrebu
System engineer
Faculty of Graphic Arts | Academy of Fine Arts
University of Zagreb, Republic of Croatia
The European Union
"I see something approaching fast ... Will it be friends with me?"
