The patch titled Subject: ipc: modify message queue accounting to not take kernel data structures into account has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account.patch This patch should soon appear at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account.patch and later at http://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/SubmitChecklist when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Marcus Gelderie <redmnic@xxxxxxxxx> Subject: ipc: modify message queue accounting to not take kernel data structures into account A while back, the message queue implementation in the kernel was improved to use btrees to speed up retrieval of messages, in d6629859b36("ipc/mqueue: improve performance of send/recv"). The patch introducing the improved kernel handling of message queues (using btrees) has, as a by-product, changed the meaning of the QSIZE field in the pseudo-file created for the queue. Before, this field reflected the size of the user-data in the queue. Since, it also takes kernel data structures into account. For example, if 13 bytes of user data are in the queue, on my machine the file reports a size of 61 bytes. There was some discussion on this topic before (for example https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/10/1/115). Commenting on a th lkml, Michael Kerrisk gave the following background (https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/6/16/74): The pseudofiles in the mqueue filesystem (usually mounted at /dev/mqueue) expose fields with metadata describing a message queue. One of these fields, QSIZE, as originally implemented, showed the total number of bytes of user data in all messages in the message queue, and this feature was documented from the beginning in the mq_overview(7) page. In 3.5, some other (useful) work happened to break the user-space API in a couple of places, including the value exposed via QSIZE, which now includes a measure of kernel overhead bytes for the queue, a figure that renders QSIZE useless for its original purpose, since there's no way to deduce the number of overhead bytes consumed by the implementation. (The other user-space breakage was subsequently fixed.) This patch removes the accounting of kernel data structures in the queue. Reporting the size of these data-structures in the QSIZE field was a breaking change (see Michael's comment above). Without the QSIZE field reporting the total size of user-data in the queue, there is no way to deduce this number. It should be noted that the resource limit RLIMIT_MSGQUEUE is counted against the worst-case size of the queue (in both the old and the new implementation). Therefore, the kernel overhead accounting in QSIZE is not necessary to help the user understand the limitations RLIMIT imposes on the processes. Signed-off-by: Marcus Gelderie <redmnic@xxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Doug Ledford <dledford@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Michael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Davidlohr Bueso <dbueso@xxxxxxx> Cc: David Howells <dhowells@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: John Duffy <jb_duffy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Arto Bendiken <arto@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- ipc/mqueue.c | 5 ----- 1 file changed, 5 deletions(-) diff -puN ipc/mqueue.c~ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account ipc/mqueue.c --- a/ipc/mqueue.c~ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account +++ a/ipc/mqueue.c @@ -142,7 +142,6 @@ static int msg_insert(struct msg_msg *ms if (!leaf) return -ENOMEM; INIT_LIST_HEAD(&leaf->msg_list); - info->qsize += sizeof(*leaf); } leaf->priority = msg->m_type; rb_link_node(&leaf->rb_node, parent, p); @@ -187,7 +186,6 @@ try_again: "lazy leaf delete!\n"); rb_erase(&leaf->rb_node, &info->msg_tree); if (info->node_cache) { - info->qsize -= sizeof(*leaf); kfree(leaf); } else { info->node_cache = leaf; @@ -200,7 +198,6 @@ try_again: if (list_empty(&leaf->msg_list)) { rb_erase(&leaf->rb_node, &info->msg_tree); if (info->node_cache) { - info->qsize -= sizeof(*leaf); kfree(leaf); } else { info->node_cache = leaf; @@ -1034,7 +1031,6 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE5(mq_timedsend, mqd_t, mqd /* Save our speculative allocation into the cache */ INIT_LIST_HEAD(&new_leaf->msg_list); info->node_cache = new_leaf; - info->qsize += sizeof(*new_leaf); new_leaf = NULL; } else { kfree(new_leaf); @@ -1142,7 +1138,6 @@ SYSCALL_DEFINE5(mq_timedreceive, mqd_t, /* Save our speculative allocation into the cache */ INIT_LIST_HEAD(&new_leaf->msg_list); info->node_cache = new_leaf; - info->qsize += sizeof(*new_leaf); } else { kfree(new_leaf); } _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from redmnic@xxxxxxxxx are ipc-modify-message-queue-accounting-to-not-take-kernel-data-structures-into-account.patch -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe mm-commits" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html