linux/arch/arm
Minchan Kim ecb8ac8b1f mm/madvise: introduce process_madvise() syscall: an external memory hinting API
There is usecase that System Management Software(SMS) want to give a
memory hint like MADV_[COLD|PAGEEOUT] to other processes and in the
case of Android, it is the ActivityManagerService.

The information required to make the reclaim decision is not known to the
app.  Instead, it is known to the centralized userspace
daemon(ActivityManagerService), and that daemon must be able to initiate
reclaim on its own without any app involvement.

To solve the issue, this patch introduces a new syscall
process_madvise(2).  It uses pidfd of an external process to give the
hint.  It also supports vector address range because Android app has
thousands of vmas due to zygote so it's totally waste of CPU and power if
we should call the syscall one by one for each vma.(With testing 2000-vma
syscall vs 1-vector syscall, it showed 15% performance improvement.  I
think it would be bigger in real practice because the testing ran very
cache friendly environment).

Another potential use case for the vector range is to amortize the cost
ofTLB shootdowns for multiple ranges when using MADV_DONTNEED; this could
benefit users like TCP receive zerocopy and malloc implementations.  In
future, we could find more usecases for other advises so let's make it
happens as API since we introduce a new syscall at this moment.  With
that, existing madvise(2) user could replace it with process_madvise(2)
with their own pid if they want to have batch address ranges support
feature.

ince it could affect other process's address range, only privileged
process(PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS) or something else(e.g., being the same
UID) gives it the right to ptrace the process could use it successfully.
The flag argument is reserved for future use if we need to extend the API.

I think supporting all hints madvise has/will supported/support to
process_madvise is rather risky.  Because we are not sure all hints make
sense from external process and implementation for the hint may rely on
the caller being in the current context so it could be error-prone.  Thus,
I just limited hints as MADV_[COLD|PAGEOUT] in this patch.

If someone want to add other hints, we could hear the usecase and review
it for each hint.  It's safer for maintenance rather than introducing a
buggy syscall but hard to fix it later.

So finally, the API is as follows,

      ssize_t process_madvise(int pidfd, const struct iovec *iovec,
                unsigned long vlen, int advice, unsigned int flags);

    DESCRIPTION
      The process_madvise() system call is used to give advice or directions
      to the kernel about the address ranges from external process as well as
      local process. It provides the advice to address ranges of process
      described by iovec and vlen. The goal of such advice is to improve
      system or application performance.

      The pidfd selects the process referred to by the PID file descriptor
      specified in pidfd. (See pidofd_open(2) for further information)

      The pointer iovec points to an array of iovec structures, defined in
      <sys/uio.h> as:

        struct iovec {
            void *iov_base;         /* starting address */
            size_t iov_len;         /* number of bytes to be advised */
        };

      The iovec describes address ranges beginning at address(iov_base)
      and with size length of bytes(iov_len).

      The vlen represents the number of elements in iovec.

      The advice is indicated in the advice argument, which is one of the
      following at this moment if the target process specified by pidfd is
      external.

        MADV_COLD
        MADV_PAGEOUT

      Permission to provide a hint to external process is governed by a
      ptrace access mode PTRACE_MODE_ATTACH_FSCREDS check; see ptrace(2).

      The process_madvise supports every advice madvise(2) has if target
      process is in same thread group with calling process so user could
      use process_madvise(2) to extend existing madvise(2) to support
      vector address ranges.

    RETURN VALUE
      On success, process_madvise() returns the number of bytes advised.
      This return value may be less than the total number of requested
      bytes, if an error occurred. The caller should check return value
      to determine whether a partial advice occurred.

FAQ:

Q.1 - Why does any external entity have better knowledge?

Quote from Sandeep

"For Android, every application (including the special SystemServer)
are forked from Zygote.  The reason of course is to share as many
libraries and classes between the two as possible to benefit from the
preloading during boot.

After applications start, (almost) all of the APIs end up calling into
this SystemServer process over IPC (binder) and back to the
application.

In a fully running system, the SystemServer monitors every single
process periodically to calculate their PSS / RSS and also decides
which process is "important" to the user for interactivity.

So, because of how these processes start _and_ the fact that the
SystemServer is looping to monitor each process, it does tend to *know*
which address range of the application is not used / useful.

Besides, we can never rely on applications to clean things up
themselves.  We've had the "hey app1, the system is low on memory,
please trim your memory usage down" notifications for a long time[1].
They rely on applications honoring the broadcasts and very few do.

So, if we want to avoid the inevitable killing of the application and
restarting it, some way to be able to tell the OS about unimportant
memory in these applications will be useful.

- ssp

Q.2 - How to guarantee the race(i.e., object validation) between when
giving a hint from an external process and get the hint from the target
process?

process_madvise operates on the target process's address space as it
exists at the instant that process_madvise is called.  If the space
target process can run between the time the process_madvise process
inspects the target process address space and the time that
process_madvise is actually called, process_madvise may operate on
memory regions that the calling process does not expect.  It's the
responsibility of the process calling process_madvise to close this
race condition.  For example, the calling process can suspend the
target process with ptrace, SIGSTOP, or the freezer cgroup so that it
doesn't have an opportunity to change its own address space before
process_madvise is called.  Another option is to operate on memory
regions that the caller knows a priori will be unchanged in the target
process.  Yet another option is to accept the race for certain
process_madvise calls after reasoning that mistargeting will do no
harm.  The suggested API itself does not provide synchronization.  It
also apply other APIs like move_pages, process_vm_write.

The race isn't really a problem though.  Why is it so wrong to require
that callers do their own synchronization in some manner?  Nobody
objects to write(2) merely because it's possible for two processes to
open the same file and clobber each other's writes --- instead, we tell
people to use flock or something.  Think about mmap.  It never
guarantees newly allocated address space is still valid when the user
tries to access it because other threads could unmap the memory right
before.  That's where we need synchronization by using other API or
design from userside.  It shouldn't be part of API itself.  If someone
needs more fine-grained synchronization rather than process level,
there were two ideas suggested - cookie[2] and anon-fd[3].  Both are
applicable via using last reserved argument of the API but I don't
think it's necessary right now since we have already ways to prevent
the race so don't want to add additional complexity with more
fine-grained optimization model.

To make the API extend, it reserved an unsigned long as last argument
so we could support it in future if someone really needs it.

Q.3 - Why doesn't ptrace work?

Injecting an madvise in the target process using ptrace would not work
for us because such injected madvise would have to be executed by the
target process, which means that process would have to be runnable and
that creates the risk of the abovementioned race and hinting a wrong
VMA.  Furthermore, we want to act the hint in caller's context, not the
callee's, because the callee is usually limited in cpuset/cgroups or
even freezed state so they can't act by themselves quick enough, which
causes more thrashing/kill.  It doesn't work if the target process are
ptraced(e.g., strace, debugger, minidump) because a process can have at
most one ptracer.

[1] https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/memory"

[2] process_getinfo for getting the cookie which is updated whenever
    vma of process address layout are changed - Daniel Colascione -
    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190520035254.57579-1-minchan@kernel.org/T/#m7694416fd179b2066a2c62b5b139b14e3894e224

[3] anonymous fd which is used for the object(i.e., address range)
    validation - Michal Hocko -
    https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20200120112722.GY18451@dhcp22.suse.cz/

[minchan@kernel.org: fix process_madvise build break for arm64]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200303145756.GA219683@google.com
[minchan@kernel.org: fix build error for mips of process_madvise]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200508052517.GA197378@google.com
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix patch ordering issue]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix arm64 whoops]
[minchan@kernel.org: make process_madvise() vlen arg have type size_t, per Florian]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix i386 build]
[sfr@canb.auug.org.au: fix syscall numbering]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200905142639.49fc3f1a@canb.auug.org.au
[sfr@canb.auug.org.au: madvise.c needs compat.h]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200908204547.285646b4@canb.auug.org.au
[minchan@kernel.org: fix mips build]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200909173655.GC2435453@google.com
[yuehaibing@huawei.com: remove duplicate header which is included twice]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200915121550.30584-1-yuehaibing@huawei.com
[minchan@kernel.org: do not use helper functions for process_madvise]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200921175539.GB387368@google.com
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: pidfd_get_pid() gained an argument]
[sfr@canb.auug.org.au: fix up for "iov_iter: transparently handle compat iovecs in import_iovec"]
  Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200928212542.468e1fef@canb.auug.org.au

Signed-off-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: YueHaibing <yuehaibing@huawei.com>
Signed-off-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Alexander Duyck <alexander.h.duyck@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Brian Geffon <bgeffon@google.com>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian@brauner.io>
Cc: Daniel Colascione <dancol@google.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Joel Fernandes <joel@joelfernandes.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: John Dias <joaodias@google.com>
Cc: Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@virtuozzo.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Oleksandr Natalenko <oleksandr@redhat.com>
Cc: Sandeep Patil <sspatil@google.com>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sj38.park@gmail.com>
Cc: SeongJae Park <sjpark@amazon.de>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@google.com>
Cc: Sonny Rao <sonnyrao@google.com>
Cc: Tim Murray <timmurray@google.com>
Cc: Christian Brauner <christian.brauner@ubuntu.com>
Cc: Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de>
Cc: <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200302193630.68771-3-minchan@kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200508183320.GA125527@google.com
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200622192900.22757-4-minchan@kernel.org
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200901000633.1920247-4-minchan@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2020-10-18 09:27:10 -07:00
..
boot USB/PHY/Thunderbolt driver patches for 5.10-rc1 2020-10-15 09:51:18 -07:00
common dma-mapping: split <linux/dma-mapping.h> 2020-10-06 07:07:03 +02:00
configs ARM: configs: Update Integrator defconfig 2020-08-20 18:12:49 -07:00
crypto crypto: arm/aes-neonbs - use typed init/exit routines for XTS 2020-09-25 17:48:15 +10:00
include dma-mapping updates for 5.10 2020-10-15 14:43:29 -07:00
kernel arch, drivers: replace for_each_membock() with for_each_mem_range() 2020-10-13 18:38:35 -07:00
lib arm: propagate the calling convention changes down to csum_partial_copy_from_user() 2020-08-20 15:45:16 -04:00
mach-actions
mach-alpine
mach-artpec
mach-asm9260
mach-aspeed
mach-at91 ARM: at91: Replace HTTP links with HTTPS ones 2020-07-18 00:59:26 +02:00
mach-axxia
mach-bcm ARM: bcm: Select ARM_TIMER_SP804 for ARCH_BCM_NSP 2020-06-14 15:09:49 -07:00
mach-berlin
mach-clps711x
mach-cns3xxx
mach-davinci NAND Core changes: 2020-10-17 10:45:42 -07:00
mach-digicolor
mach-dove
mach-ebsa110
mach-efm32
mach-ep93xx treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
mach-exynos ARM: SoC driver updates for v5.9 2020-08-03 19:30:59 -07:00
mach-footbridge treewide: replace '---help---' in Kconfig files with 'help' 2020-06-14 01:57:21 +09:00
mach-gemini
mach-highbank dma-mapping: split <linux/dma-mapping.h> 2020-10-06 07:07:03 +02:00
mach-hisi
mach-imx dma-mapping updates for 5.10 2020-10-15 14:43:29 -07:00
mach-integrator mm: reorder includes after introduction of linux/pgtable.h 2020-06-09 09:39:13 -07:00
mach-iop32x
mach-ixp4xx ARM/ixp4xx: add a missing include of dma-map-ops.h 2020-10-13 13:28:22 +02:00
mach-keystone dma-mapping: introduce DMA range map, supplanting dma_pfn_offset 2020-09-17 18:43:56 +02:00
mach-lpc18xx
mach-lpc32xx
mach-mediatek
mach-meson
mach-milbeaut
mach-mmp treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
mach-moxart
mach-mstar ARM: mstar: Add machine for MStar/Sigmastar Armv7 SoCs 2020-07-28 11:13:49 +02:00
mach-mv78xx0
mach-mvebu dma-mapping: split <linux/dma-mapping.h> 2020-10-06 07:07:03 +02:00
mach-mxs
mach-nomadik
mach-npcm
mach-nspire
mach-omap1 ARM/omap1: switch to use dma_direct_set_offset for lbus DMA offsets 2020-09-25 06:15:32 +02:00
mach-omap2 ARM: SoC fixes 2020-09-13 14:54:40 -07:00
mach-orion5x treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
mach-oxnas
mach-picoxcell
mach-prima2
mach-pxa media: mach-pxa: palmz72/pcm990: remove soc_camera dependencies 2020-07-04 12:19:12 +02:00
mach-qcom
mach-rda
mach-realtek
mach-realview
mach-rockchip
mach-rpc treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
mach-s3c24xx NAND Core changes: 2020-10-17 10:45:42 -07:00
mach-s3c64xx mtd: rawnand: Use the new ECC engine type enumeration 2020-09-28 15:59:42 +02:00
mach-s5pv210
mach-sa1100 treewide: Remove uninitialized_var() usage 2020-07-16 12:35:15 -07:00
mach-shmobile dma-mapping: merge <linux/dma-contiguous.h> into <linux/dma-map-ops.h> 2020-10-06 07:07:04 +02:00
mach-socfpga ARM: socfpga: PM: add missing put_device() call in socfpga_setup_ocram_self_refresh() 2020-07-28 13:57:36 -05:00
mach-spear
mach-sti Revert "ARM: sti: Implement dummy L2 cache's write_sec" 2020-06-28 14:46:54 +02:00
mach-stm32
mach-sunxi
mach-tango
mach-tegra treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
mach-u300
mach-uniphier
mach-ux500
mach-versatile
mach-vexpress
mach-vt8500
mach-zx
mach-zynq mm: reorder includes after introduction of linux/pgtable.h 2020-06-09 09:39:13 -07:00
mm dma-mapping updates for 5.10 2020-10-15 14:43:29 -07:00
net
nwfpe
oprofile
plat-omap treewide: Use fallthrough pseudo-keyword 2020-08-23 17:36:59 -05:00
plat-orion ARM: orion/gpio: Make use of for_each_requested_gpio() 2020-07-18 22:49:23 +02:00
plat-pxa
plat-samsung
plat-versatile
probes arm: kprobes: Use generic kretprobe trampoline handler 2020-09-08 11:52:32 +02:00
tools mm/madvise: introduce process_madvise() syscall: an external memory hinting API 2020-10-18 09:27:10 -07:00
vdso ARM: vdso: Don't use gcc plugins for building vgettimeofday.c 2020-06-24 07:48:27 -07:00
vfp ARM: 8991/1: use VFP assembler mnemonics if available 2020-07-21 16:33:39 +01:00
xen dma-mapping updates for 5.10 2020-10-15 14:43:29 -07:00
Kbuild ARM: 8981/1: add arch/arm/Kbuild 2020-07-21 16:33:35 +01:00
Kconfig Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2020-10-14 09:57:24 -07:00
Kconfig-nommu
Kconfig.assembler ARM: 8991/1: use VFP assembler mnemonics if available 2020-07-21 16:33:39 +01:00
Kconfig.debug treewide: replace '---help---' in Kconfig files with 'help' 2020-06-14 01:57:21 +09:00
Makefile arm/build: Warn on orphan section placement 2020-09-03 10:28:35 +02:00