15 Jul, 2006

5 commits

  • On systems with a large number of cpus, with even a modest rate of tasks
    exiting per cpu, the volume of taskstats data sent on thread exit can
    overflow a userspace listener's buffers.

    One approach to avoiding overflow is to allow listeners to get data for a
    limited and specific set of cpus. By scaling the number of listeners
    and/or the cpus they monitor, userspace can handle the statistical data
    overload more gracefully.

    In this patch, each listener registers to listen to a specific set of cpus
    by specifying a cpumask. The interest is recorded per-cpu. When a task
    exits on a cpu, its taskstats data is unicast to each listener interested
    in that cpu.

    Thanks to Andrew Morton for pointing out the various scalability and
    general concerns of previous attempts and for suggesting this design.

    [akpm@osdl.org: build fix]
    Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar
    Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh
    Signed-off-by: Chandra Seetharaman
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Shailabh Nagar
     
  • Don't send taskstats (per-pid or per-tgid) on thread exit when no one is
    listening for such data.

    Currently the taskstats interface allocates a structure, fills it in and
    calls netlink to send out per-pid and per-tgid stats regardless of whether
    a userspace listener for the data exists (netlink layer would check for
    that and avoid the multicast).

    As a result of this patch, the check for the no-listener case is performed
    early, avoiding the redundant allocation and filling up of the taskstats
    structures.

    Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh
    Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar
    Cc: Jay Lan
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Shailabh Nagar
     
  • Send per-tgid data only once during exit of a thread group instead of once
    with each member thread exit.

    Currently, when a thread exits, besides its per-tid data, the per-tgid data
    of its thread group is also sent out, if its thread group is non-empty.
    The per-tgid data sent consists of the sum of per-tid stats for all
    *remaining* threads of the thread group.

    This patch modifies this sending in two ways:

    - the per-tgid data is sent only when the last thread of a thread group
    exits. This cuts down heavily on the overhead of sending/receiving
    per-tgid data, especially when other exploiters of the taskstats
    interface aren't interested in per-tgid stats

    - the semantics of the per-tgid data sent are changed. Instead of being
    the sum of per-tid data for remaining threads, the value now sent is the
    true total accumalated statistics for all threads that are/were part of
    the thread group.

    The patch also addresses a minor issue where failure of one accounting
    subsystem to fill in the taskstats structure was causing the send of
    taskstats to not be sent at all.

    The patch has been tested for stability and run cerberus for over 4 hours
    on an SMP.

    [akpm@osdl.org: bugfixes]
    Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar
    Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh
    Cc: Jay Lan
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Shailabh Nagar
     
  • Usage of taskstats interface by delay accounting.

    Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar
    Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh
    Cc: Jes Sorensen
    Cc: Peter Chubb
    Cc: Erich Focht
    Cc: Levent Serinol
    Cc: Jay Lan
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Shailabh Nagar
     
  • Create a "taskstats" interface based on generic netlink (NETLINK_GENERIC
    family), for getting statistics of tasks and thread groups during their
    lifetime and when they exit. The interface is intended for use by multiple
    accounting packages though it is being created in the context of delay
    accounting.

    This patch creates the interface without populating the fields of the data
    that is sent to the user in response to a command or upon the exit of a task.
    Each accounting package interested in using taskstats has to provide an
    additional patch to add its stats to the common structure.

    [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups, Kconfig fix]
    Signed-off-by: Shailabh Nagar
    Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh
    Cc: Jes Sorensen
    Cc: Peter Chubb
    Cc: Erich Focht
    Cc: Levent Serinol
    Cc: Jay Lan
    Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

    Shailabh Nagar