counters of allocs/frees/use for each malloc type to calculating InUse,
MemUse, and Requests as displayed by the userspace vmstat -m. This is
more useful when debugging malloc(9)-related memory leaks, where the
count of allocs/frees may not usefully reflect that current memory
allocation (i.e., when highly variable size allocations occur with the
same malloc type, such as with contigmalloc).
MFC after: 3 days
Limitations observed by: scottl
the kernel malloc(9) state for vmstat -m. libmemstat is now used to
generate a machine-readable version which is converged by vmstat -m
into a human-readable version.
Not for MFC.
Releasing items from the mt_zone can not be done by a simple
uma_zfree() call since mt_zone is allocated with the UMA_ZONE_MALLOC
flag. Use uma_zfree_arg instead and supply the slab.
This bug caused panics in low memory situations on unloading kernel
modules containing MALLOC_DEFINE(..) statements.
Submitted by: ups
It detects both: buffer underflows and buffer overflows bugs at runtime
(on free(9) and realloc(9)) and prints backtraces from where memory was
allocated and from where it was freed.
Tested by: kris
- Provide tunable vm.memguard.desc, so one can specify memory type without
changing the code and recompiling the kernel.
- Allow to use memguard for kernel modules by providing sysctl
vm.memguard.desc, which can be changed to short description of memory
type before module is loaded.
- Move as much memguard code as possible to memguard.c.
- Add sysctl node vm.memguard. and move memguard-specific sysctl there.
- Add malloc_desc2type() function for finding memory type based on its
short description (ks_shortdesc field).
- Memory type can be changed (via vm.memguard.desc sysctl) only if it
doesn't exist (will be loaded later) or when no memory is allocated yet.
If there is allocated memory for the given memory type, return EBUSY.
- Implement two ways of memory types comparsion and make safer/slower the
default.
UMA_SLAB_MALLOC flag.
In some circumstances (I observed it when I was doing a lot of reallocs)
UMA_SLAB_MALLOC can be set even if us_keg != NULL.
If this is the case we have wonderful, silent data corruption, because less
data is copied to the newly allocated region than should be.
I'm not sure when this bug was introduced, it could be there undetected
for years now, as we don't have a lot of realloc(9) consumers and it was
hard to reproduce it...
...but what I know for sure, is that I don't want to know who introduce
the bug:) It took me two/three days to track it down (of course most of
the time I was looking for the bug in my own code).
available kernel malloc types. Quite useful for post-mortem debugging of
memory leaks without a dump device configured on a panicked box.
MFC after: 2 weeks
- increase number of allocations count only on successfull malloc(9),
so it doesn't confuse people;
- because we need to check if 'size > 0', hide 'mtsp->mts_memalloced += size;'
under the check as well, as for size=0 it is of course a no-op;
- avoid critical_enter()/critical_exit() in case of failure in
malloc_type_allocated() as there will be nothing to do.
OK'ed by: rwatson
MFC after: 2 days
statistics via a binary structure stream:
- Add structure 'malloc_type_stream_header', which defines a stream
version, definition of MAXCPUS used in the stream, and a number of
malloc_type records in the stream.
- Add structure 'malloc_type_header', which defines the name of the
malloc type being reported on.
- When the sysctl is queried, return a stream header, followed by a
series of type descriptions, each consisting of a type header
followed by a series of MAXCPUS malloc_type_stats structures holding
per-CPU allocation information. Typical values of MAXCPUS will be 1
(UP compiled kernel) and 16 (SMP compiled kernel).
This query mechanism allows user space monitoring tools to extract
memory allocation statistics in a machine-readable form, and to do so
at a per-CPU granularity, allowing monitoring of allocation patterns
across CPUs in order to better understand the distribution of work and
memory flow over multiple CPUs.
While here:
- Bump statistics width to uint64_t, and hard code using fixed-width
type in order to be more sure about structure layout in the stream.
We allocate and free a lot of memory.
- Add kmemcount, a counter of the number of registered malloc types,
in order to avoid excessive manual counting of types. Export via a
new sysctl to allow user-space code to better size buffers.
- De-XXX comment on no longer maintaining the high watermark in old
sysctl monitoring code.
A follow-up commit of libmemstat(3), a library to monitor kernel memory
allocation, will occur in the next few days. Likewise, similar changes
to UMA.
allocators: a set of power-of-two UMA zones for small allocations, and the
VM page allocator for large allocations. In order to maintain unified
statistics for specific malloc types, kernel malloc maintains a separate
per-type statistics pool, which can be monitored using vmstat -m. Prior
to this commit, each pool of per-type statistics was protected using a
per-type mutex associated with the malloc type.
This change modifies kernel malloc to maintain per-CPU statistics pools
for each malloc type, and protects writing those statistics using critical
sections. It also moves to unsynchronized reads of per-CPU statistics
when generating coalesced statistics. To do this, several changes are
implemented:
- In the previous world order, the statistics memory was allocated by
the owner of the malloc type structure, allocated statically using
MALLOC_DEFINE(). This embedded the definition of the malloc_type
structure into all kernel modules. Move to a model in which a pointer
within struct malloc_type points at a UMA-allocated
malloc_type_internal data structure owned and maintained by
kern_malloc.c, and not part of the exported ABI/API to the rest of
the kernel. For the purposes of easing a possible MFC, re-use an
existing pointer in 'struct malloc_type', and maintain the current
malloc_type structure size, as well as layout with respect to the
fields reused outside of the malloc subsystem (such as ks_shortdesc).
There are several unused fields as a result of no longer requiring
the mutex in malloc_type.
- Struct malloc_type_internal contains an array of malloc_type_stats,
of size MAXCPU. The structure defined above avoids hard-coding a
kernel compile-time value of MAXCPU into kernel modules that interact
with malloc.
- When accessing per-cpu statistics for a malloc type, surround read -
modify - update requests with critical_enter()/critical_exit() in
order to avoid races during write. The per-CPU fields are written
only from the CPU that owns them.
- Per-CPU stats now maintained "allocated" and "freed" counters for
number of allocations/frees and bytes allocated/freed, since there is
no longer a coherent global notion of the totals. When coalescing
malloc stats, accept a slight race between reading stats across CPUs,
and avoid showing the user a negative allocation count for the type
in the event of a race. The global high watermark is no longer
maintained for a malloc type, as there is no global notion of the
number of allocations.
- While tearing up the sysctl() path, also switch to using sbufs. The
current "export as text" sysctl format is retained with the same
syntax. We may want to change this in the future to export more
per-CPU information, such as how allocations and frees are balanced
across CPUs.
This change results in a substantial speedup of kernel malloc and free
paths on SMP, as critical sections (where usable) out-perform mutexes
due to avoiding atomic/bus-locked operations. There is also a minor
improvement on UP due to the slightly lower cost of critical sections
there. The cost of the change to this approach is the loss of a
continuous notion of total allocations that can be exploited to track
per-type high watermarks, as well as increased complexity when
monitoring statistics.
Due to carefully avoiding changing the ABI, as well as hardening the ABI
against future changes, it is not necessary to recompile kernel modules
for this change. However, MFC'ing this change to RELENG_5 will require
also MFC'ing optimizations for soft critical sections, which may modify
exposed kernel ABIs. The internal malloc API is changed, and
modifications to vmstat in order to restore "vmstat -m" on core dumps will
follow shortly.
Several improvements from: bde
Statistics approach discussed with: ups
Tested by: scottl, others
designed to help detect tamper-after-free scenarios, a problem more
and more common and likely with multithreaded kernels where race
conditions are more prevalent.
Currently MemGuard can only take over malloc()/realloc()/free() for
particular (a) malloc type(s) and the code brought in with this
change manually instruments it to take over M_SUBPROC allocations
as an example. If you are planning to use it, for now you must:
1) Put "options DEBUG_MEMGUARD" in your kernel config.
2) Edit src/sys/kern/kern_malloc.c manually, look for
"XXX CHANGEME" and replace the M_SUBPROC comparison with
the appropriate malloc type (this might require additional
but small/simple code modification if, say, the malloc type
is declared out of scope).
3) Build and install your kernel. Tune vm.memguard_divisor
boot-time tunable which is used to scale how much of kmem_map
you want to allott for MemGuard's use. The default is 10,
so kmem_size/10.
ToDo:
1) Bring in a memguard(9) man page.
2) Better instrumentation (e.g., boot-time) of MemGuard taking
over malloc types.
3) Teach UMA about MemGuard to allow MemGuard to override zone
allocations too.
4) Improve MemGuard if necessary.
This work is partly based on some old patches from Ian Dowse.
improved chance of working despite pressure from running programs.
Instead of trying to throw a bunch of pages out to swap and hope for
the best, only a range that can potentially fulfill contigmalloc(9)'s
request will have its contents paged out (potentially, not forcibly)
at a time.
The new contigmalloc operation still operates in three passes, but it
could potentially be tuned to more or less. The first pass only looks
at pages in the cache and free pages, so they would be thrown out
without having to block. If this is not enough, the subsequent passes
page out any unwired memory. To combat memory pressure refragmenting
the section of memory being laundered, each page is removed from the
systems' free memory queue once it has been freed so that blocking
later doesn't cause the memory laundered so far to get reallocated.
The page-out operations are now blocking, as it would make little sense
to try to push out a page, then get its status immediately afterward
to remove it from the available free pages queue, if it's unlikely to
have been freed. Another change is that if KVA allocation fails, the
allocated memory segment will be freed and not leaked.
There is a sysctl/tunable, defaulting to on, which causes the old
contigmalloc() algorithm to be used. Nonetheless, I have been using
vm.old_contigmalloc=0 for over a month. It is safe to switch at
run-time to see the difference it makes.
A new interface has been used which does not require mapping the
allocated pages into KVA: vm_page.h functions vm_page_alloc_contig()
and vm_page_release_contig(). These are what vm.old_contigmalloc=0
uses internally, so the sysctl/tunable does not affect their operation.
When using the contigmalloc(9) and contigfree(9) interfaces, memory
is now tracked with malloc(9) stats. Several functions have been
exported from kern_malloc.c to allow other subsystems to use these
statistics, as well. This invalidates the BUGS section of the
contigmalloc(9) manpage.
o Make debugging code conditional upon KDB instead of DDB.
o Call kdb_enter() instead of Debugger().
o Call kdb_backtrace() instead of db_print_backtrace() or backtrace().
kern_mutex.c:
o Replace checks for db_active with checks for kdb_active and make
them unconditional.
kern_shutdown.c:
o s/DDB_UNATTENDED/KDB_UNATTENDED/g
o s/DDB_TRACE/KDB_TRACE/g
o Save the TID of the thread doing the kernel dump so the debugger
knows which thread to select as the current when debugging the
kernel core file.
o Clear kdb_active instead of db_active and do so unconditionally.
o Remove backtrace() implementation.
kern_synch.c:
o Call kdb_reenter() instead of db_error().
mbuma is an Mbuf & Cluster allocator built on top of a number of
extensions to the UMA framework, all included herein.
Extensions to UMA worth noting:
- Better layering between slab <-> zone caches; introduce
Keg structure which splits off slab cache away from the
zone structure and allows multiple zones to be stacked
on top of a single Keg (single type of slab cache);
perhaps we should look into defining a subset API on
top of the Keg for special use by malloc(9),
for example.
- UMA_ZONE_REFCNT zones can now be added, and reference
counters automagically allocated for them within the end
of the associated slab structures. uma_find_refcnt()
does a kextract to fetch the slab struct reference from
the underlying page, and lookup the corresponding refcnt.
mbuma things worth noting:
- integrates mbuf & cluster allocations with extended UMA
and provides caches for commonly-allocated items; defines
several zones (two primary, one secondary) and two kegs.
- change up certain code paths that always used to do:
m_get() + m_clget() to instead just use m_getcl() and
try to take advantage of the newly defined secondary
Packet zone.
- netstat(1) and systat(1) quickly hacked up to do basic
stat reporting but additional stats work needs to be
done once some other details within UMA have been taken
care of and it becomes clearer to how stats will work
within the modified framework.
From the user perspective, one implication is that the
NMBCLUSTERS compile-time option is no longer used. The
maximum number of clusters is still capped off according
to maxusers, but it can be made unlimited by setting
the kern.ipc.nmbclusters boot-time tunable to zero.
Work should be done to write an appropriate sysctl
handler allowing dynamic tuning of kern.ipc.nmbclusters
at runtime.
Additional things worth noting/known issues (READ):
- One report of 'ips' (ServeRAID) driver acting really
slow in conjunction with mbuma. Need more data.
Latest report is that ips is equally sucking with
and without mbuma.
- Giant leak in NFS code sometimes occurs, can't
reproduce but currently analyzing; brueffer is
able to reproduce but THIS IS NOT an mbuma-specific
problem and currently occurs even WITHOUT mbuma.
- Issues in network locking: there is at least one
code path in the rip code where one or more locks
are acquired and we end up in m_prepend() with
M_WAITOK, which causes WITNESS to whine from within
UMA. Current temporary solution: force all UMA
allocations to be M_NOWAIT from within UMA for now
to avoid deadlocks unless WITNESS is defined and we
can determine with certainty that we're not holding
any locks when we're M_WAITOK.
- I've seen at least one weird socketbuffer empty-but-
mbuf-still-attached panic. I don't believe this
to be related to mbuma but please keep your eyes
open, turn on debugging, and capture crash dumps.
This change removes more code than it adds.
A paper is available detailing the change and considering
various performance issues, it was presented at BSDCan2004:
http://www.unixdaemons.com/~bmilekic/netbuf_bmilekic.pdf
Please read the paper for Future Work and implementation
details, as well as credits.
Testing and Debugging:
rwatson,
brueffer,
Ketrien I. Saihr-Kesenchedra,
...
Reviewed by: Lots of people (for different parts)
assure backward compatibility (conditional on !BURN_BRIDGES), look it up
by its old name first, and log a warning (but accept the setting) if it
was found. If both the old and new name are defined, the new name takes
precedence.
Also export vm.kmem_size as a read-only sysctl variable; I find it hard to
tune a parameter when I don't know its default value, especially when that
default value is computed at boot time.
immediately after the kernel map has been sized, and is
the optimal place for the autosizing of memory allocations
which occur within the kernel map to occur.
Suggested by: bde
too small panics on PAE machines which have odd > 4GB sizes (4.5 gig
would render a 20MB of KVA for kmem_map instead of 200MB).
Submitted by: John Cagle <john.cagle@hp.com>, jeff
Reviewed by: jeff, peter, scottl, lots of USENIX folks
that the feature can be enabled during the boot process. Note the
continued limitation that FreeBSD fails so rapidly with this setting
enabled that it's hard to narrow down particular failures for
correction; we really need per-malloc type failure rates.
in a debugging feature causing M_NOWAIT allocations to fail at
a specified rate. This can be useful for detecting poor
handling of M_NOWAIT: the most frequent problems I've bumped
into are unconditional deference of the pointer even though
it's NULL, and hangs as a result of a lost event where memory
for the event couldn't be allocated. Two sysctls are added:
debug.malloc.failure_rate
How often to generate a failure: if set to 0 (default), this
feature is disabled. Otherwise, the frequency of failures --
I've been using 10 (one in ten mallocs fails), but other
popular settings might be much lower or much higher.
debug.malloc.failure_count
Number of times a coerced malloc failure has occurred as a
result of this feature. Useful for tracking what might have
happened and whether failures are being generated.
Useful possible additions: tying failure rate to malloc type,
printfs indicating the thread that experienced the coerced
failure.
Reviewed by: jeffr, jhb
I had commented the #ifdef INVARIANTS checks out to make sure I ran this
code in all kernels and forgot to comment the #ifdefs back in before I
committed.
Spotted by: bmilekic
[1] PHCC = Pointy Hat Correction Commit
compile-time constants). That is, a "bucket" now is not necessarily
a page-worth of mbufs or clusters, but it is MBUF_BUCK_SZ, CLUS_BUCK_SZ
worth of mbufs, clusters.
o Rename {mbuf,clust}_limit to {mbuf,clust}_hiwm and introduce
{mbuf,clust}_lowm, which currently has no effect but will be used
to set the low watermarks.
o Fix netstat so that it can deal with the differently-sized buckets
and teach it about the low watermarks too.
o Make sure the per-cpu stats for an absent CPU has mb_active set to 0,
explicitly.
o Get rid of the allocate refcounts from mbuf map mess. Instead,
just malloc() the refcounts in one shot from mbuf_init()
o Clean up / update comments in subr_mbuf.c
malloc(9) failed last time. This is intended to help code adjust
memory usage to the current circumstances.
A typical use could be:
if (malloc_last_fail() < 60)
reduce_cache_by_one();
- Remove all instances of the mallochash.
- Stash the slab pointer in the vm page's object pointer when allocating from
the kmem_obj.
- Use the overloaded object pointer to find slabs for malloced memory.
mallochash. Mallochash is going to go away as soon as I introduce the
kfree/kmalloc api and partially overhaul the malloc wrapper. This can't happen
until all users of the malloc api that expect memory to be aligned on the size
of the allocation are fixed.