SLAB_CTOR atomic is never used which is no surprise since I cannot imagine
that one would want to do something serious in a constructor or destructor.
 In particular given that the slab allocators run with interrupts disabled.
 Actions in constructors and destructors are by their nature very limited
and usually do not go beyond initializing variables and list operations.

(The i386 pgd ctor and dtors do take a spinlock in constructor and
destructor.....  I think that is the furthest we go at this point.)

There is no flag passed to the destructor so removing SLAB_CTOR_ATOMIC also
establishes a certain symmetry.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

I have never seen a use of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL.  It is only supported by
SLAB.

I think its purpose was to have a callback after an object has been freed
to verify that the state is the constructor state again?  The callback is
performed before each freeing of an object.

I would think that it is much easier to check the object state manually
before the free.  That also places the check near the code object
manipulation of the object.

Also the SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL callback is only performed if the kernel was
compiled with SLAB debugging on.  If there would be code in a constructor
handling SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL then it would have to be conditional on
SLAB_DEBUG otherwise it would just be dead code.  But there is no such code
in the kernel.  I think SLUB_DEBUG_INITIAL is too problematic to make real
use of, difficult to understand and there are easier ways to accomplish the
same effect (i.e.  add debug code before kfree).

There is a related flag SLAB_CTOR_VERIFY that is frequently checked to be
clear in fs inode caches.  Remove the pointless checks (they would even be
pointless without removeal of SLAB_DEBUG_INITIAL) from the fs constructors.

This is the last slab flag that SLUB did not support.  Remove the check for
unimplemented flags from SLUB.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

This patch was recently posted to lkml and acked by Pekka.

The flag SLAB_MUST_HWCACHE_ALIGN is

1. Never checked by SLAB at all.

2. A duplicate of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLUB

3. Fulfills the role of SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN for SLOB.

The only remaining use is in sparc64 and ppc64 and their use there
reflects some earlier role that the slab flag once may have had. If
its specified then SLAB_HWCACHE_ALIGN is also specified.

The flag is confusing, inconsistent and has no purpose.

Remove it.
Acked-by: NPekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Make sure that the check function really only check things and do not perform
activities.  Extract the tracing and object seeding out of the two check
functions and place them into slab_alloc and slab_free
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

At kmem_cache_shrink check if we have any empty slabs on the partial
if so then remove them.

Also--as an anti-fragmentation measure--sort the partial slabs so that
the most fully allocated ones come first and the least allocated last.

The next allocations may fill up the nearly full slabs. Having the
least allocated slabs last gives them the maximum chance that their
remaining objects may be freed. Thus we can hopefully minimize the
partial slabs.

I think this is the best one can do in terms antifragmentation
measures. Real defragmentation (meaning moving objects out of slabs with
the least free objects to those that are almost full) can be implemted
by reverse scanning through the list produced here but that would mean
that we need to provide a callback at slab cache creation that allows
the deletion or moving of an object. This will involve slab API
changes, so defer for now.

Cc: Mel Gorman <mel@skynet.ie>
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

This patch enables listing the callers who allocated or freed objects in a
cache.

For example to list the allocators for kmalloc-128 do

cat /sys/slab/kmalloc-128/alloc_calls
      7 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x40/0x700
      7 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x80/0x700
      9 sn_bus_fixup+0xe0/0x380
      6 param_sysfs_setup+0xf0/0x280
    276 percpu_populate+0xf0/0x1a0
     19 __register_chrdev_region+0x30/0x360
      8 expand_files+0x2e0/0x6e0
      1 sys_epoll_create+0x60/0x200
      1 __mounts_open+0x140/0x2c0
     65 kmem_alloc+0x110/0x280
      3 alloc_disk_node+0xe0/0x200
     33 as_get_io_context+0x90/0x280
     74 kobject_kset_add_dir+0x40/0x140
     12 pci_create_bus+0x2a0/0x5c0
      1 acpi_ev_create_gpe_block+0x120/0x9e0
     41 con_insert_unipair+0x100/0x1c0
      1 uart_open+0x1c0/0xba0
      1 dma_pool_create+0xe0/0x340
      2 neigh_table_init_no_netlink+0x260/0x4c0
      6 neigh_parms_alloc+0x30/0x200
      1 netlink_kernel_create+0x130/0x320
      5 fz_hash_alloc+0x50/0xe0
      2 sn_common_hubdev_init+0xd0/0x6e0
     28 kernel_param_sysfs_setup+0x30/0x180
     72 process_zones+0x70/0x2e0

cat /sys/slab/kmalloc-128/free_calls
    558 <not-available>
      3 sn_io_slot_fixup+0x600/0x700
     84 free_fdtable_rcu+0x120/0x260
      2 seq_release+0x40/0x60
      6 kmem_free+0x70/0xc0
     24 free_as_io_context+0x20/0x200
      1 acpi_get_object_info+0x3a0/0x3e0
      1 acpi_add_single_object+0xcf0/0x1e40
      2 con_release_unimap+0x80/0x140
      1 free+0x20/0x40

SLAB_STORE_USER must be enabled for a slab cache by either booting with
"slab_debug" or enabling user tracking specifically for the slab of interest.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

We leave a mininum of partial slabs on nodes when we search for
partial slabs on other node. Define a constant for that value.

Then modify slub to keep MIN_PARTIAL slabs around.

This avoids bad situations where a function frees the last object
in a slab (which results in the page being returned to the page
allocator) only to then allocate one again (which requires getting
a page back from the page allocator if the partial list was empty).
Keeping a couple of slabs on the partial list reduces overhead.

Empty slabs are added to the end of the partial list to insure that
partially allocated slabs are consumed first (defragmentation).
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

This enables validation of slab.  Validation means that all objects are
checked to see if there are redzone violations, if padding has been
overwritten or any pointers have been corrupted.  Also checks the consistency
of slab counters.

Validation enables the detection of metadata corruption without the kernel
having to execute code that actually uses (allocs/frees) and object.  It
allows one to make sure that the slab metainformation and the guard values
around an object have not been compromised.

A single slabcache can be checked by writing a 1 to the "validate" file.

i.e.

echo 1 >/sys/slab/kmalloc-128/validate

or use the slabinfo tool to check all slabs

slabinfo -v

Error messages will show up in the syslog.

Note that validation can only reach slabs that are on a list.  This means that
we are usually restricted to partial slabs and active slabs unless
SLAB_STORE_USER is active which will build a full slab list and allows
validation of slabs that are fully in use.  Booting with "slub_debug" set will
enable SLAB_STORE_USER and then full diagnostic are available.

Note that we attempt to push cpu slabs back to the lists when we start the
check.  If the cpu slab is reactivated before we get to it (another processor
grabs it before we get to it) then it cannot be checked.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

If slab tracking is on then build a list of full slabs so that we can verify
the integrity of all slabs and are also able to built list of alloc/free
callers.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Object tracking did not work the right way for several call chains. Fix this up
by adding a new parameter to slub_alloc and slub_free that specifies the
caller address explicitly.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

If we add a new flag so that we can distinguish between the first page and the
tail pages then we can avoid to use page->private in the first page.
page->private == page for the first page, so there is no real information in
there.

Freeing up page->private makes the use of compound pages more transparent.
They become more usable like real pages.  Right now we have to be careful f.e.
 if we are going beyond PAGE_SIZE allocations in the slab on i386 because we
can then no longer use the private field.  This is one of the issues that
cause us not to support debugging for page size slabs in SLAB.

Having page->private available for SLUB would allow more meta information in
the page struct.  I can probably avoid the 16 bit ints that I have in there
right now.

Also if page->private is available then a compound page may be equipped with
buffer heads.  This may free up the way for filesystems to support larger
blocks than page size.

We add PageTail as an alias of PageReclaim.  Compound pages cannot currently
be reclaimed.  Because of the alias one needs to check PageCompound first.

The RFC for the this approach was discussed at
http://marc.info/?t=117574302800001&r=1&w=2

[nacc@us.ibm.com: fix hugetlbfs]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NNishanth Aravamudan <nacc@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Makes SLUB behave like SLAB in this area to avoid issues....

Throw a stack dump to alert people.

At some point the behavior should be switched back.  NULL is no memory as
far as I can tell and if the use asked for 0 bytes then he need to get no
memory.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

Structures may contain u64 items on 32 bit platforms that are only able to
address 64 bit items on 64 bit boundaries.  Change the mininum alignment of
slabs to conform to those expectations.

ARCH_KMALLOC_MINALIGN must be changed for good since a variety of structure
are mixed in the general slabs.

ARCH_SLAB_MINALIGN is changed because currently there is no consistent
specification of object alignment.  We may have that in the future when the
KMEM_CACHE and related macros are used to generate slabs.  These pass the
alignment of the structure generated by the compiler to the slab.

With KMEM_CACHE etc we could align structures that do not contain 64
bit values to 32 bit boundaries potentially saving some memory.
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

This is a new slab allocator which was motivated by the complexity of the
existing code in mm/slab.c. It attempts to address a variety of concerns
with the existing implementation.

A. Management of object queues

   A particular concern was the complex management of the numerous object
   queues in SLAB. SLUB has no such queues. Instead we dedicate a slab for
   each allocating CPU and use objects from a slab directly instead of
   queueing them up.

B. Storage overhead of object queues

   SLAB Object queues exist per node, per CPU. The alien cache queue even
   has a queue array that contain a queue for each processor on each
   node. For very large systems the number of queues and the number of
   objects that may be caught in those queues grows exponentially. On our
   systems with 1k nodes / processors we have several gigabytes just tied up
   for storing references to objects for those queues  This does not include
   the objects that could be on those queues. One fears that the whole
   memory of the machine could one day be consumed by those queues.

C. SLAB meta data overhead

   SLAB has overhead at the beginning of each slab. This means that data
   cannot be naturally aligned at the beginning of a slab block. SLUB keeps
   all meta data in the corresponding page_struct. Objects can be naturally
   aligned in the slab. F.e. a 128 byte object will be aligned at 128 byte
   boundaries and can fit tightly into a 4k page with no bytes left over.
   SLAB cannot do this.

D. SLAB has a complex cache reaper

   SLUB does not need a cache reaper for UP systems. On SMP systems
   the per CPU slab may be pushed back into partial list but that
   operation is simple and does not require an iteration over a list
   of objects. SLAB expires per CPU, shared and alien object queues
   during cache reaping which may cause strange hold offs.

E. SLAB has complex NUMA policy layer support

   SLUB pushes NUMA policy handling into the page allocator. This means that
   allocation is coarser (SLUB does interleave on a page level) but that
   situation was also present before 2.6.13. SLABs application of
   policies to individual slab objects allocated in SLAB is
   certainly a performance concern due to the frequent references to
   memory policies which may lead a sequence of objects to come from
   one node after another. SLUB will get a slab full of objects
   from one node and then will switch to the next.

F. Reduction of the size of partial slab lists

   SLAB has per node partial lists. This means that over time a large
   number of partial slabs may accumulate on those lists. These can
   only be reused if allocator occur on specific nodes. SLUB has a global
   pool of partial slabs and will consume slabs from that pool to
   decrease fragmentation.

G. Tunables

   SLAB has sophisticated tuning abilities for each slab cache. One can
   manipulate the queue sizes in detail. However, filling the queues still
   requires the uses of the spin lock to check out slabs. SLUB has a global
   parameter (min_slab_order) for tuning. Increasing the minimum slab
   order can decrease the locking overhead. The bigger the slab order the
   less motions of pages between per CPU and partial lists occur and the
   better SLUB will be scaling.

G. Slab merging

   We often have slab caches with similar parameters. SLUB detects those
   on boot up and merges them into the corresponding general caches. This
   leads to more effective memory use. About 50% of all caches can
   be eliminated through slab merging. This will also decrease
   slab fragmentation because partial allocated slabs can be filled
   up again. Slab merging can be switched off by specifying
   slub_nomerge on boot up.

   Note that merging can expose heretofore unknown bugs in the kernel
   because corrupted objects may now be placed differently and corrupt
   differing neighboring objects. Enable sanity checks to find those.

H. Diagnostics

   The current slab diagnostics are difficult to use and require a
   recompilation of the kernel. SLUB contains debugging code that
   is always available (but is kept out of the hot code paths).
   SLUB diagnostics can be enabled via the "slab_debug" option.
   Parameters can be specified to select a single or a group of
   slab caches for diagnostics. This means that the system is running
   with the usual performance and it is much more likely that
   race conditions can be reproduced.

I. Resiliency

   If basic sanity checks are on then SLUB is capable of detecting
   common error conditions and recover as best as possible to allow the
   system to continue.

J. Tracing

   Tracing can be enabled via the slab_debug=T,<slabcache> option
   during boot. SLUB will then protocol all actions on that slabcache
   and dump the object contents on free.

K. On demand DMA cache creation.

   Generally DMA caches are not needed. If a kmalloc is used with
   __GFP_DMA then just create this single slabcache that is needed.
   For systems that have no ZONE_DMA requirement the support is
   completely eliminated.

L. Performance increase

   Some benchmarks have shown speed improvements on kernbench in the
   range of 5-10%. The locking overhead of slub is based on the
   underlying base allocation size. If we can reliably allocate
   larger order pages then it is possible to increase slub
   performance much further. The anti-fragmentation patches may
   enable further performance increases.

Tested on:
i386 UP + SMP, x86_64 UP + SMP + NUMA emulation, IA64 NUMA + Simulator

SLUB Boot options

slub_nomerge		Disable merging of slabs
slub_min_order=x	Require a minimum order for slab caches. This
			increases the managed chunk size and therefore
			reduces meta data and locking overhead.
slub_min_objects=x	Mininum objects per slab. Default is 8.
slub_max_order=x	Avoid generating slabs larger than order specified.
slub_debug		Enable all diagnostics for all caches
slub_debug=<options>	Enable selective options for all caches
slub_debug=<o>,<cache>	Enable selective options for a certain set of
			caches

Available Debug options
F		Double Free checking, sanity and resiliency
R		Red zoning
P		Object / padding poisoning
U		Track last free / alloc
T		Trace all allocs / frees (only use for individual slabs).

To use SLUB: Apply this patch and then select SLUB as the default slab
allocator.

[hugh@veritas.com: fix an oops-causing locking error]
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: various stupid cleanups and small fixes]
Signed-off-by: NChristoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com>
Signed-off-by: NHugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Signed-off-by: NAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: NLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>