On Sat, Jul 08, 2023 at 12:12:12PM -0700, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
[..]
> Lock VMAs of the parent process when forking a child, which prevents
> concurrent page faults during fork operation and avoids this issue.
> This fix can potentially regress some fork-heavy workloads. Kernel build
> time did not show noticeable regression on a 56-core machine while a
> stress test mapping 10000 VMAs and forking 5000 times in a tight loop
> shows ~5% regression. If such fork time regression is unacceptable,
> disabling CONFIG_PER_VMA_LOCK should restore its performance. Further
> optimizations are possible if this regression proves to be problematic.
>
> ---
> kernel/fork.c | 1 +
> 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>
> diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
> index b85814e614a5..d2e12b6d2b18 100644
> --- a/kernel/fork.c
> +++ b/kernel/fork.c
> @@ -686,6 +686,7 @@ static __latent_entropy int dup_mmap(struct mm_struct *mm,
> for_each_vma(old_vmi, mpnt) {
> struct file *file;
>
> + vma_start_write(mpnt);
> if (mpnt->vm_flags & VM_DONTCOPY) {
> vm_stat_account(mm, mpnt->vm_flags, -vma_pages(mpnt));
> continue;
>
I don't see it mentioned in the discussion, so at a risk of ruffling
feathers or looking really bad I'm going to ask: is the locking of any
use if the forking process is single-threaded? The singular thread in
this case is occupied executing this very code, so it can't do any op
in parallel. Is there anyone else who could trigger a page fault? Are
these shared with other processes? Cursory reading suggests a private
copy is made here, so my guess is no. But then again, I landed here
freshly from the interwebz.
Or in short: if nobody can mess up the state if the forking process is
single-threaded, why not check for mm_users or whatever other indicator
to elide the slowdown for the (arguably) most common case?
If the state can be messed up anyway, that's a shame, but short
explanation how would be welcome.
to illustrate (totally untested):
diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index d2e12b6d2b18..aac6b08a0b21 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -652,6 +652,7 @@ static __latent_entropy int dup_mmap(struct mm_struct *mm,
LIST_HEAD(uf);
VMA_ITERATOR(old_vmi, oldmm, 0);
VMA_ITERATOR(vmi, mm, 0);
+ bool singlethread = READ_ONCE(oldmm->mm_users) == 1;
uprobe_start_dup_mmap();
if (mmap_write_lock_killable(oldmm)) {
@@ -686,7 +687,8 @@ static __latent_entropy int dup_mmap(struct mm_struct *mm,
for_each_vma(old_vmi, mpnt) {
struct file *file;
- vma_start_write(mpnt);
+ if (!singelthreaded)
+ vma_start_write(mpnt);
if (mpnt->vm_flags & VM_DONTCOPY) {
vm_stat_account(mm, mpnt->vm_flags, -vma_pages(mpnt));
continue;
