59450bbc12
SLAB has been using get/put_online_cpus() around creating, destroying and
shrinking kmem caches since 95402b382901 ("cpu-hotplug: replace
per-subsystem mutexes with get_online_cpus()") in 2008, which is supposed
to be replacing a private mutex (cache_chain_mutex, called slab_mutex
today) with system-wide mechanism, but in case of SLAB it's in fact used
in addition to the existing mutex, without explanation why.
SLUB appears to have avoided the cpu hotplug lock initially, but gained it
due to common code unification, such as 20cea9683ecc ("mm, sl[aou]b: Move
kmem_cache_create mutex handling to common code").
Regardless of the history, checking if the hotplug lock is actually needed
today suggests that it's not, and therefore it's better to avoid this
system-wide lock and the ordering this imposes wrt other locks (such as
slab_mutex).
Specifically, in SLAB we have for_each_online_cpu() in do_tune_cpucache()
protected by slab_mutex, and cpu hotplug callbacks that also take the
slab_mutex, which is also taken by the common slab function that currently
also take the hotplug lock. Thus the slab_mutex protection should be
sufficient. Also per-cpu array caches are allocated for each possible
cpu, so not affected by their online/offline state.
In SLUB we have for_each_online_cpu() in functions that show statistics
and are already unprotected today, as racing with hotplug is not harmful.
Otherwise SLUB relies on percpu allocator. The slub_cpu_dead() hotplug
callback takes the slab_mutex.
To sum up, this patch removes get/put_online_cpus() calls from slab as it
should be safe without further adjustments.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210113131634.3671-4-vbabka@suse.cz
Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: Qian Cai <cai@redhat.com>
Cc: Vladimir Davydov <vdavydov.dev@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.