On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 11:29:54PM -0400, Rik van Riel wrote:
> On 08/21/2012 11:20 PM, Michel Lespinasse wrote:
> >On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 02:39:26AM -0700, Michel Lespinasse wrote:
> >>Instead of adding an atomic count for page references, we could limit
> >>the anon_vma stacking depth. In fork, we would only clone anon_vmas
> >>that have a low enough generation count. I think that's not great
> >>(adds a special case for the deep-fork-without-exec behavior), but
> >>still better than the atomic page reference counter.
> >
> >Here is an attached patch to demonstrate the idea.
> >
> >anon_vma_clone() is modified to return the length of the existing same_vma
> >anon vma chain, and we create a new anon_vma in the child only on the first
> >fork (this could be tweaked to allow up to a set number of forks, but
> >I think the first fork would cover all the common forking server cases).
> 
> I suspect we need 2 or 3.
> 
> Some forking servers first fork off one child, and have
> the original parent exit, in order to "background the server".
> That first child then becomes the parent to the real child
> processes that do the work.
> 
> It is conceivable that we might need an extra level for
> processes that do something special with privilege dropping,
> namespace changing, etc...
> 
> Even setting the threshold to 5 should be totally harmless,
> since the problem does not kick in until we have really
> long chains, like in Dan's bug report.

I have been running with Michel's patch (with the threshold set to 5)
for quite a few months now and can confirm that it does indeed solve
my problem.  I am not a kernel developer, so I would appreciate if one
of you could push this into the kernel tree.

NOTE: I have attached Michel's patch with "(length > 1)" modified to
"(length > 5)" and added a "Tested-by:".

---

On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 02:39:26AM -0700, Michel Lespinasse wrote:
> Instead of adding an atomic count for page references, we could limit
> the anon_vma stacking depth. In fork, we would only clone anon_vmas
> that have a low enough generation count. I think that's not great
> (adds a special case for the deep-fork-without-exec behavior), but
> still better than the atomic page reference counter.

Here is an attached patch to demonstrate the idea.

anon_vma_clone() is modified to return the length of the existing same_vma
anon vma chain, and we create a new anon_vma in the child only on the first
fork (this could be tweaked to allow up to a set number of forks, but
I think the first fork would cover all the common forking server cases).

Signed-off-by: Michel Lespinasse <wal...@google.com>
Tested-by: Daniel Forrest <dan.forr...@ssec.wisc.edu>
---
 mm/mmap.c |    6 +++---
 mm/rmap.c |   18 ++++++++++++++----
 2 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/mm/mmap.c b/mm/mmap.c
index 3edfcdfa42d9..e14b19a838cb 100644
--- a/mm/mmap.c
+++ b/mm/mmap.c
@@ -539,7 +539,7 @@ again:                      remove_next = 1 + (end > 
next->vm_end);
                 * shrinking vma had, to cover any anon pages imported.
                 */
                if (exporter && exporter->anon_vma && !importer->anon_vma) {
-                       if (anon_vma_clone(importer, exporter))
+                       if (anon_vma_clone(importer, exporter) < 0)
                                return -ENOMEM;
                        importer->anon_vma = exporter->anon_vma;
                }
@@ -1988,7 +1988,7 @@ static int __split_vma(struct mm_struct * mm, struct 
vm_area_struct * vma,
        }
        vma_set_policy(new, pol);
 
-       if (anon_vma_clone(new, vma))
+       if (anon_vma_clone(new, vma) < 0)
                goto out_free_mpol;
 
        if (new->vm_file) {
@@ -2409,7 +2409,7 @@ struct vm_area_struct *copy_vma(struct vm_area_struct 
**vmap,
                        if (IS_ERR(pol))
                                goto out_free_vma;
                        INIT_LIST_HEAD(&new_vma->anon_vma_chain);
-                       if (anon_vma_clone(new_vma, vma))
+                       if (anon_vma_clone(new_vma, vma) < 0)
                                goto out_free_mempol;
                        vma_set_policy(new_vma, pol);
                        new_vma->vm_start = addr;
diff --git a/mm/rmap.c b/mm/rmap.c
index 0f3b7cda2a24..ba8a726aaee6 100644
--- a/mm/rmap.c
+++ b/mm/rmap.c
@@ -238,12 +238,13 @@ static inline void unlock_anon_vma_root(struct anon_vma 
*root)
 
 /*
  * Attach the anon_vmas from src to dst.
- * Returns 0 on success, -ENOMEM on failure.
+ * Returns length of the anon_vma chain on success, -ENOMEM on failure.
  */
 int anon_vma_clone(struct vm_area_struct *dst, struct vm_area_struct *src)
 {
        struct anon_vma_chain *avc, *pavc;
        struct anon_vma *root = NULL;
+       int length = 0;
 
        list_for_each_entry_reverse(pavc, &src->anon_vma_chain, same_vma) {
                struct anon_vma *anon_vma;
@@ -259,9 +260,10 @@ int anon_vma_clone(struct vm_area_struct *dst, struct 
vm_area_struct *src)
                anon_vma = pavc->anon_vma;
                root = lock_anon_vma_root(root, anon_vma);
                anon_vma_chain_link(dst, avc, anon_vma);
+               length++;
        }
        unlock_anon_vma_root(root);
-       return 0;
+       return length;
 
  enomem_failure:
        unlink_anon_vmas(dst);
@@ -322,6 +324,7 @@ int anon_vma_fork(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct 
vm_area_struct *pvma)
 {
        struct anon_vma_chain *avc;
        struct anon_vma *anon_vma;
+       int length;
 
        /* Don't bother if the parent process has no anon_vma here. */
        if (!pvma->anon_vma)
@@ -331,10 +334,17 @@ int anon_vma_fork(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct 
vm_area_struct *pvma)
         * First, attach the new VMA to the parent VMA's anon_vmas,
         * so rmap can find non-COWed pages in child processes.
         */
-       if (anon_vma_clone(vma, pvma))
+       length = anon_vma_clone(vma, pvma);
+       if (length < 0)
                return -ENOMEM;
+       else if (length > 5)
+               return 0;
 
-       /* Then add our own anon_vma. */
+       /*
+        * Then add our own anon_vma. We do this only on the first fork after
+        * the anon_vma is created, as we don't want the same_vma chain to
+        * grow arbitrarily large.
+        */
        anon_vma = anon_vma_alloc();
        if (!anon_vma)
                goto out_error;

-- 
Daniel K. Forrest               Space Science and
dan.forr...@ssec.wisc.edu       Engineering Center
(608) 890 - 0558                University of Wisconsin, Madison
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