<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux-stable.git/kernel/module/stats.c, branch v7.3-rc2</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel stable tree</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>module: use strscpy() to copy module names in stats and dup tracking</title>
<updated>2026-08-06T11:29:02+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Naveen Kumar Chaudhary</name>
<email>naveen.osdev@gmail.com</email>
</author>
<published>2026-06-04T17:45:02+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=93c29ebd1622fb0670701e1c1b3a978a5cac08b7'/>
<id>93c29ebd1622fb0670701e1c1b3a978a5cac08b7</id>
<content type='text'>
Both try_add_failed_module() and kmod_dup_request_exists_wait() use
memcpy() with strlen() to copy module names into fixed-size
char[MODULE_NAME_LEN] buffers. Neither performs a bounds check on the
copy. Current callers always pass names originating from
mod-&gt;name (itself char[MODULE_NAME_LEN]), so this is not exploitable
today. However both functions accept a plain const char * with no
documented length contract, making them latent buffer overflows if a
future caller passes a longer string.

Replace memcpy() with strscpy() in both sites, which bounds the copy
to MODULE_NAME_LEN and always NUL-terminates.

Signed-off-by: Naveen Kumar Chaudhary &lt;naveen.osdev@gmail.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Petr Pavlu &lt;petr.pavlu@suse.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Petr Pavlu &lt;petr.pavlu@suse.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Both try_add_failed_module() and kmod_dup_request_exists_wait() use
memcpy() with strlen() to copy module names into fixed-size
char[MODULE_NAME_LEN] buffers. Neither performs a bounds check on the
copy. Current callers always pass names originating from
mod-&gt;name (itself char[MODULE_NAME_LEN]), so this is not exploitable
today. However both functions accept a plain const char * with no
documented length contract, making them latent buffer overflows if a
future caller passes a longer string.

Replace memcpy() with strscpy() in both sites, which bounds the copy
to MODULE_NAME_LEN and always NUL-terminates.

Signed-off-by: Naveen Kumar Chaudhary &lt;naveen.osdev@gmail.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Petr Pavlu &lt;petr.pavlu@suse.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Petr Pavlu &lt;petr.pavlu@suse.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Convert 'alloc_obj' family to use the new default GFP_KERNEL argument</title>
<updated>2026-02-22T01:09:51+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2026-02-22T00:37:42+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=bf4afc53b77aeaa48b5409da5c8da6bb4eff7f43'/>
<id>bf4afc53b77aeaa48b5409da5c8da6bb4eff7f43</id>
<content type='text'>
This was done entirely with mindless brute force, using

    git grep -l '\&lt;k[vmz]*alloc_objs*(.*, GFP_KERNEL)' |
        xargs sed -i 's/\(alloc_objs*(.*\), GFP_KERNEL)/\1)/'

to convert the new alloc_obj() users that had a simple GFP_KERNEL
argument to just drop that argument.

Note that due to the extreme simplicity of the scripting, any slightly
more complex cases spread over multiple lines would not be triggered:
they definitely exist, but this covers the vast bulk of the cases, and
the resulting diff is also then easier to check automatically.

For the same reason the 'flex' versions will be done as a separate
conversion.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This was done entirely with mindless brute force, using

    git grep -l '\&lt;k[vmz]*alloc_objs*(.*, GFP_KERNEL)' |
        xargs sed -i 's/\(alloc_objs*(.*\), GFP_KERNEL)/\1)/'

to convert the new alloc_obj() users that had a simple GFP_KERNEL
argument to just drop that argument.

Note that due to the extreme simplicity of the scripting, any slightly
more complex cases spread over multiple lines would not be triggered:
they definitely exist, but this covers the vast bulk of the cases, and
the resulting diff is also then easier to check automatically.

For the same reason the 'flex' versions will be done as a separate
conversion.

Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>treewide: Replace kmalloc with kmalloc_obj for non-scalar types</title>
<updated>2026-02-21T09:02:28+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Kees Cook</name>
<email>kees@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2026-02-21T07:49:23+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=69050f8d6d075dc01af7a5f2f550a8067510366f'/>
<id>69050f8d6d075dc01af7a5f2f550a8067510366f</id>
<content type='text'>
This is the result of running the Coccinelle script from
scripts/coccinelle/api/kmalloc_objs.cocci. The script is designed to
avoid scalar types (which need careful case-by-case checking), and
instead replace kmalloc-family calls that allocate struct or union
object instances:

Single allocations:	kmalloc(sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_obj(TYPE, ...)

Array allocations:	kmalloc_array(COUNT, sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_objs(TYPE, COUNT, ...)

Flex array allocations:	kmalloc(struct_size(PTR, FAM, COUNT), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_flex(*PTR, FAM, COUNT, ...)

(where TYPE may also be *VAR)

The resulting allocations no longer return "void *", instead returning
"TYPE *".

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook &lt;kees@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This is the result of running the Coccinelle script from
scripts/coccinelle/api/kmalloc_objs.cocci. The script is designed to
avoid scalar types (which need careful case-by-case checking), and
instead replace kmalloc-family calls that allocate struct or union
object instances:

Single allocations:	kmalloc(sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_obj(TYPE, ...)

Array allocations:	kmalloc_array(COUNT, sizeof(TYPE), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_objs(TYPE, COUNT, ...)

Flex array allocations:	kmalloc(struct_size(PTR, FAM, COUNT), ...)
are replaced with:	kmalloc_flex(*PTR, FAM, COUNT, ...)

(where TYPE may also be *VAR)

The resulting allocations no longer return "void *", instead returning
"TYPE *".

Signed-off-by: Kees Cook &lt;kees@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: Fix comment typo</title>
<updated>2023-11-01T20:07:08+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Zhu Mao</name>
<email>zhumao001@208suo.com</email>
</author>
<published>2023-09-21T00:13:09+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=fd06da776130ec2611c30272a0868f6a54cdf9d2'/>
<id>fd06da776130ec2611c30272a0868f6a54cdf9d2</id>
<content type='text'>
Delete duplicated word in comment.

Signed-off-by: Zhu Mao &lt;zhumao001@208suo.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Delete duplicated word in comment.

Signed-off-by: Zhu Mao &lt;zhumao001@208suo.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: Fix use-after-free bug in read_file_mod_stats()</title>
<updated>2023-05-22T21:13:13+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Harshit Mogalapalli</name>
<email>harshit.m.mogalapalli@oracle.com</email>
</author>
<published>2023-04-28T05:59:33+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=d36f6efbe0cb422fe1e4475717d75f3737088832'/>
<id>d36f6efbe0cb422fe1e4475717d75f3737088832</id>
<content type='text'>
Smatch warns:
	kernel/module/stats.c:394 read_file_mod_stats()
	warn: passing freed memory 'buf'

We are passing 'buf' to simple_read_from_buffer() after freeing it.

Fix this by changing the order of 'simple_read_from_buffer' and 'kfree'.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Harshit Mogalapalli &lt;harshit.m.mogalapalli@oracle.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Smatch warns:
	kernel/module/stats.c:394 read_file_mod_stats()
	warn: passing freed memory 'buf'

We are passing 'buf' to simple_read_from_buffer() after freeing it.

Fix this by changing the order of 'simple_read_from_buffer' and 'kfree'.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Harshit Mogalapalli &lt;harshit.m.mogalapalli@oracle.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: stats: fix invalid_mod_bytes typo</title>
<updated>2023-04-18T18:36:41+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arnd Bergmann</name>
<email>arnd@arndb.de</email>
</author>
<published>2023-04-18T07:17:51+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=a81b1fc8ea639e03326c1d0dcde041986bc11500'/>
<id>a81b1fc8ea639e03326c1d0dcde041986bc11500</id>
<content type='text'>
This was caught by randconfig builds but does not show up in
build testing without CONFIG_MODULE_DECOMPRESS:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'mod_stat_bump_invalid':
kernel/module/stats.c:229:42: error: 'invalid_mod_byte' undeclared (first use in this function); did you mean 'invalid_mod_bytes'?
  229 |   atomic_long_add(info-&gt;compressed_len, &amp;invalid_mod_byte);
      |                                          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      |                                          invalid_mod_bytes

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@infradead.org&gt;
Tested-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@infradead.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This was caught by randconfig builds but does not show up in
build testing without CONFIG_MODULE_DECOMPRESS:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'mod_stat_bump_invalid':
kernel/module/stats.c:229:42: error: 'invalid_mod_byte' undeclared (first use in this function); did you mean 'invalid_mod_bytes'?
  229 |   atomic_long_add(info-&gt;compressed_len, &amp;invalid_mod_byte);
      |                                          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      |                                          invalid_mod_bytes

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Acked-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@infradead.org&gt;
Tested-by: Randy Dunlap &lt;rdunlap@infradead.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: remove use of uninitialized variable len</title>
<updated>2023-04-18T18:36:24+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Tom Rix</name>
<email>trix@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2023-04-17T23:09:57+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=9f5cab173e19201eebeaca853ff664a9a269fed0'/>
<id>9f5cab173e19201eebeaca853ff664a9a269fed0</id>
<content type='text'>
clang build reports
kernel/module/stats.c:307:34: error: variable
  'len' is uninitialized when used here [-Werror,-Wuninitialized]
        len = scnprintf(buf + 0, size - len,
                                        ^~~
At the start of this sequence, neither the '+ 0', nor the '- len' are needed.
So remove them and fix using 'len' uninitalized.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Tom Rix &lt;trix@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
clang build reports
kernel/module/stats.c:307:34: error: variable
  'len' is uninitialized when used here [-Werror,-Wuninitialized]
        len = scnprintf(buf + 0, size - len,
                                        ^~~
At the start of this sequence, neither the '+ 0', nor the '- len' are needed.
So remove them and fix using 'len' uninitalized.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Tom Rix &lt;trix@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: fix building stats for 32-bit targets</title>
<updated>2023-04-18T18:36:00+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arnd Bergmann</name>
<email>arnd@arndb.de</email>
</author>
<published>2023-04-17T22:48:04+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=719ccd803ed5bd1ad92b0b46fc095b8fe266827e'/>
<id>719ccd803ed5bd1ad92b0b46fc095b8fe266827e</id>
<content type='text'>
The new module statistics code mixes 64-bit types and wordsized 'long'
variables, which leads to build failures on 32-bit architectures:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'read_file_mod_stats':
kernel/module/stats.c:291:29: error: passing argument 1 of 'atomic64_read' from incompatible pointer type [-Werror=incompatible-pointer-types]
  291 |  total_size = atomic64_read(&amp;total_mod_size);
x86_64-linux-ld: kernel/module/stats.o: in function `read_file_mod_stats':
stats.c:(.text+0x2b2): undefined reference to `__udivdi3'

To fix this, the code has to use one of the two types consistently.

Change them all to word-size types here.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The new module statistics code mixes 64-bit types and wordsized 'long'
variables, which leads to build failures on 32-bit architectures:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'read_file_mod_stats':
kernel/module/stats.c:291:29: error: passing argument 1 of 'atomic64_read' from incompatible pointer type [-Werror=incompatible-pointer-types]
  291 |  total_size = atomic64_read(&amp;total_mod_size);
x86_64-linux-ld: kernel/module/stats.o: in function `read_file_mod_stats':
stats.c:(.text+0x2b2): undefined reference to `__udivdi3'

To fix this, the code has to use one of the two types consistently.

Change them all to word-size types here.

Fixes: df3e764d8e5c ("module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure")
Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: stats: include uapi/linux/module.h</title>
<updated>2023-04-18T18:35:50+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arnd Bergmann</name>
<email>arnd@arndb.de</email>
</author>
<published>2023-04-17T22:02:46+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=635dc38314c75c5727711d896d4c71ec92f6f20b'/>
<id>635dc38314c75c5727711d896d4c71ec92f6f20b</id>
<content type='text'>
MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE is defined in the uapi header, which
is not included indirectly from the normal linux/module.h, but
has to be pulled in explicitly:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'mod_stat_bump_invalid':
kernel/module/stats.c:227:14: error: 'MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE' undeclared (first use in this function)
  227 |  if (flags &amp; MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE)
      |              ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE is defined in the uapi header, which
is not included indirectly from the normal linux/module.h, but
has to be pulled in explicitly:

kernel/module/stats.c: In function 'mod_stat_bump_invalid':
kernel/module/stats.c:227:14: error: 'MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE' undeclared (first use in this function)
  227 |  if (flags &amp; MODULE_INIT_COMPRESSED_FILE)
      |              ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Signed-off-by: Arnd Bergmann &lt;arnd@arndb.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>module: avoid allocation if module is already present and ready</title>
<updated>2023-04-18T18:15:24+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Luis Chamberlain</name>
<email>mcgrof@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2023-03-11T04:48:03+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux-stable.git/commit/?id=064f4536d13939b6e8cdb71298ff5d657f4f8caa'/>
<id>064f4536d13939b6e8cdb71298ff5d657f4f8caa</id>
<content type='text'>
The finit_module() system call can create unnecessary virtual memory
pressure for duplicate modules. This is because load_module() can in
the worse case allocate more than twice the size of a module in virtual
memory. This saves at least a full size of the module in wasted vmalloc
space memory by trying to avoid duplicates as soon as we can validate
the module name in the read module structure.

This can only be an issue if a system is getting hammered with userspace
loading modules. There are two ways to load modules typically on systems,
one is the kernel moduile auto-loading (*request_module*() calls in-kernel)
and the other is things like udev. The auto-loading is in-kernel, but that
pings back to userspace to just call modprobe. We already have a way to
restrict the amount of concurrent kernel auto-loads in a given time, however
that still allows multiple requests for the same module to go through
and force two threads in userspace racing to call modprobe for the same
exact module. Even though libkmod which both modprobe and udev does check
if a module is already loaded prior calling finit_module() races are
still possible and this is clearly evident today when you have multiple
CPUs.

To avoid memory pressure for such stupid cases put a stop gap for them.
The *earliest* we can detect duplicates from the modules side of things
is once we have blessed the module name, sadly after the first vmalloc
allocation. We can check for the module being present *before* a secondary
vmalloc() allocation.

There is a linear relationship between wasted virtual memory bytes and
the number of CPU counts. The reason is that udev ends up racing to call
tons of the same modules for each of the CPUs.

We can see the different linear relationships between wasted virtual
memory and CPU count during after boot in the following graph:

         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    14GB |-+          +            +            +           +           *+          +-|
         |                                                          ****              |
         |                                                       ***                  |
         |                                                     **                     |
    12GB |-+                                                 **                     +-|
         |                                                 **                         |
         |                                               **                           |
         |                                             **                             |
         |                                           **                               |
    10GB |-+                                       **                               +-|
         |                                       **                                   |
         |                                     **                                     |
         |                                   **                                       |
     8GB |-+                               **                                       +-|
waste    |                               **                             ###           |
         |                             **                           ####              |
         |                           **                      #######                  |
     6GB |-+                     ****                    ####                       +-|
         |                      *                    ####                             |
         |                     *                 ####                                 |
         |                *****              ####                                     |
     4GB |-+            **               ####                                       +-|
         |            **             ####                                             |
         |          **           ####                                                 |
         |        **         ####                                                     |
     2GB |-+    **      #####                                                       +-|
         |     *    ####                                                              |
         |    * ####                                                   Before ******* |
         |  **##      +            +            +           +           After ####### |
         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
         0            50          100          150         200          250          300
                                          CPUs count

On the y-axis we can see gigabytes of wasted virtual memory during boot
due to duplicate module requests which just end up failing. Trying to
infer the slope this ends up being about ~463 MiB per CPU lost prior
to this patch. After this patch we only loose about ~230 MiB per CPU, for
a total savings of about ~233 MiB per CPU. This is all *just on bootup*!

On a 8vcpu 8 GiB RAM system using kdevops and testing against selftests
kmod.sh -t 0008 I see a saving in the *highest* side of memory
consumption of up to ~ 84 MiB with the Linux kernel selftests kmod
test 0008. With the new stress-ng module test I see a 145 MiB difference
in max memory consumption with 100 ops. The stress-ng module ops tests can be
pretty pathalogical -- it is not realistic, however it was used to
finally successfully reproduce issues which are only reported to happen on
system with over 400 CPUs [0] by just usign 100 ops on a 8vcpu 8 GiB RAM
system. Running out of virtual memory space is no surprise given the
above graph, since at least on x86_64 we're capped at 128 MiB, eventually
we'd hit a series of errors and once can use the above graph to
guestimate when. This of course will vary depending on the features
you have enabled. So for instance, enabling KASAN seems to make this
much worse.

The results with kmod and stress-ng can be observed and visualized below.
The time it takes to run the test is also not affected.

The kmod tests 0008:

The gnuplot is set to a range from 400000 KiB (390 Mib) - 580000 (566 Mib)
given the tests peak around that range.

cat kmod.plot
set term dumb
set output fileout
set yrange [400000:580000]
plot filein with linespoints title "Memory usage (KiB)"

Before:
root@kmod ~ # /data/linux-next/tools/testing/selftests/kmod/kmod.sh -t 0008
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; log-0008-before.txt ^C
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r log-0008-before.txt | head -1
528732

So ~516.33 MiB

After:

root@kmod ~ # /data/linux-next/tools/testing/selftests/kmod/kmod.sh -t 0008
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; log-0008-after.txt ^C

root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r log-0008-after.txt | head -1
442516

So ~432.14 MiB

That's about 84 ~MiB in savings in the worst case. The graphs:

root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='log-0008-before.txt'; fileout='graph-0008-before.txt'" kmod.plot
root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='log-0008-after.txt';  fileout='graph-0008-after.txt'"  kmod.plot

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-0008-before.txt

  580000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  560000 |-+                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A***-|
         |                                                                 |
  540000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |        *A     *AA*AA*A*AA          *A*AA    A*A*A *AA*A*AA*A  A |
  520000 |-+A*A*AA  *AA*A           *A*AA*A*AA     *A*A     A          *A+-|
         |*A                                                               |
  500000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  480000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  460000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |                                                                 |
  440000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  420000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  400000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         0       5        10      15      20      25       30      35      40

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-0008-after.txt

  580000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  560000 |-+                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A***-|
         |                                                                 |
  540000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |                                                                 |
  520000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  500000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  480000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  460000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |          *A              *A*A                                   |
  440000 |-+A*A*AA*A  A       A*A*AA    A*A*AA*A*AA*A*AA*A*AA*AA*A*AA*A*AA-|
         |*A           *A*AA*A                                             |
  420000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  400000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         0       5        10      15      20      25       30      35      40

The stress-ng module tests:

This is used to run the test to try to reproduce the vmap issues
reported by David:

  echo 0 &gt; /proc/sys/vm/oom_dump_tasks
  ./stress-ng --module 100 --module-name xfs

Prior to this commit:
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; baseline-stress-ng.txt
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r baseline-stress-ng.txt | head -1
5046456

After this commit:
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; after-stress-ng.txt
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r after-stress-ng.txt | head -1
4896972

5046456 - 4896972
149484
149484/1024
145.98046875000000000000

So this commit using stress-ng reveals saving about 145 MiB in memory
using 100 ops from stress-ng which reproduced the vmap issue reported.

cat kmod.plot
set term dumb
set output fileout
set yrange [4700000:5070000]
plot filein with linespoints title "Memory usage (KiB)"

root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='baseline-stress-ng.txt'; fileout='graph-stress-ng-before.txt'"  kmod-simple-stress-ng.plot
root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='after-stress-ng.txt'; fileout='graph-stress-ng-after.txt'"  kmod-simple-stress-ng.plot

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-stress-ng-before.txt

           +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  5.05e+06 |-+     + A     +       +       +       +       +       +     +-|
           |         *                          Memory usage (KiB) ***A*** |
           |         *                             A                       |
     5e+06 |-+      **                            **                     +-|
           |        **                            * *    A                 |
  4.95e+06 |-+      * *                          A  *   A*               +-|
           |        * *      A       A           *  *  *  *             A  |
           |       *  *     * *     * *        *A   *  *  *      A      *  |
   4.9e+06 |-+     *  *     * A*A   * A*AA*A  A      *A    **A   **A*A  *+-|
           |       A  A*A  A    *  A       *  *      A     A *  A    * **  |
           |      *      **      **         * *              *  *    * * * |
  4.85e+06 |-+   A       A       A          **               *  *     ** *-|
           |     *                           *               * *      ** * |
           |     *                           A               * *      *  * |
   4.8e+06 |-+   *                                           * *      A  A-|
           |     *                                           * *           |
  4.75e+06 |-+  *                                            * *         +-|
           |    *                                            **            |
           |    *  +       +       +       +       +       + **    +       |
   4.7e+06 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
           0       5       10      15      20      25      30      35      40

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-stress-ng-after.txt

           +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  5.05e+06 |-+     +       +       +       +       +       +       +     +-|
           |                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A*** |
           |                                                               |
     5e+06 |-+                                                           +-|
           |                                                               |
  4.95e+06 |-+                                                           +-|
           |                                                               |
           |                                                               |
   4.9e+06 |-+                                      *AA                  +-|
           |  A*AA*A*A  A  A*AA*AA*A*AA*A  A  A  A*A   *AA*A*A  A  A*AA*AA |
           |  *      * **  *            *  *  ** *            ***  *       |
  4.85e+06 |-+*       ***  *            * * * ***             A *  *     +-|
           |  *       A *  *             ** * * A               *  *       |
           |  *         *  *             *  **                  *  *       |
   4.8e+06 |-+*         *  *             A   *                  *  *     +-|
           | *          * *                  A                  * *        |
  4.75e+06 |-*          * *                                     * *      +-|
           | *          * *                                     * *        |
           | *     +    * *+       +       +       +       +    * *+       |
   4.7e+06 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
           0       5       10      15      20      25      30      35      40

[0] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20221013180518.217405-1-david@redhat.com

Reported-by: David Hildenbrand &lt;david@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The finit_module() system call can create unnecessary virtual memory
pressure for duplicate modules. This is because load_module() can in
the worse case allocate more than twice the size of a module in virtual
memory. This saves at least a full size of the module in wasted vmalloc
space memory by trying to avoid duplicates as soon as we can validate
the module name in the read module structure.

This can only be an issue if a system is getting hammered with userspace
loading modules. There are two ways to load modules typically on systems,
one is the kernel moduile auto-loading (*request_module*() calls in-kernel)
and the other is things like udev. The auto-loading is in-kernel, but that
pings back to userspace to just call modprobe. We already have a way to
restrict the amount of concurrent kernel auto-loads in a given time, however
that still allows multiple requests for the same module to go through
and force two threads in userspace racing to call modprobe for the same
exact module. Even though libkmod which both modprobe and udev does check
if a module is already loaded prior calling finit_module() races are
still possible and this is clearly evident today when you have multiple
CPUs.

To avoid memory pressure for such stupid cases put a stop gap for them.
The *earliest* we can detect duplicates from the modules side of things
is once we have blessed the module name, sadly after the first vmalloc
allocation. We can check for the module being present *before* a secondary
vmalloc() allocation.

There is a linear relationship between wasted virtual memory bytes and
the number of CPU counts. The reason is that udev ends up racing to call
tons of the same modules for each of the CPUs.

We can see the different linear relationships between wasted virtual
memory and CPU count during after boot in the following graph:

         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
    14GB |-+          +            +            +           +           *+          +-|
         |                                                          ****              |
         |                                                       ***                  |
         |                                                     **                     |
    12GB |-+                                                 **                     +-|
         |                                                 **                         |
         |                                               **                           |
         |                                             **                             |
         |                                           **                               |
    10GB |-+                                       **                               +-|
         |                                       **                                   |
         |                                     **                                     |
         |                                   **                                       |
     8GB |-+                               **                                       +-|
waste    |                               **                             ###           |
         |                             **                           ####              |
         |                           **                      #######                  |
     6GB |-+                     ****                    ####                       +-|
         |                      *                    ####                             |
         |                     *                 ####                                 |
         |                *****              ####                                     |
     4GB |-+            **               ####                                       +-|
         |            **             ####                                             |
         |          **           ####                                                 |
         |        **         ####                                                     |
     2GB |-+    **      #####                                                       +-|
         |     *    ####                                                              |
         |    * ####                                                   Before ******* |
         |  **##      +            +            +           +           After ####### |
         +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
         0            50          100          150         200          250          300
                                          CPUs count

On the y-axis we can see gigabytes of wasted virtual memory during boot
due to duplicate module requests which just end up failing. Trying to
infer the slope this ends up being about ~463 MiB per CPU lost prior
to this patch. After this patch we only loose about ~230 MiB per CPU, for
a total savings of about ~233 MiB per CPU. This is all *just on bootup*!

On a 8vcpu 8 GiB RAM system using kdevops and testing against selftests
kmod.sh -t 0008 I see a saving in the *highest* side of memory
consumption of up to ~ 84 MiB with the Linux kernel selftests kmod
test 0008. With the new stress-ng module test I see a 145 MiB difference
in max memory consumption with 100 ops. The stress-ng module ops tests can be
pretty pathalogical -- it is not realistic, however it was used to
finally successfully reproduce issues which are only reported to happen on
system with over 400 CPUs [0] by just usign 100 ops on a 8vcpu 8 GiB RAM
system. Running out of virtual memory space is no surprise given the
above graph, since at least on x86_64 we're capped at 128 MiB, eventually
we'd hit a series of errors and once can use the above graph to
guestimate when. This of course will vary depending on the features
you have enabled. So for instance, enabling KASAN seems to make this
much worse.

The results with kmod and stress-ng can be observed and visualized below.
The time it takes to run the test is also not affected.

The kmod tests 0008:

The gnuplot is set to a range from 400000 KiB (390 Mib) - 580000 (566 Mib)
given the tests peak around that range.

cat kmod.plot
set term dumb
set output fileout
set yrange [400000:580000]
plot filein with linespoints title "Memory usage (KiB)"

Before:
root@kmod ~ # /data/linux-next/tools/testing/selftests/kmod/kmod.sh -t 0008
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; log-0008-before.txt ^C
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r log-0008-before.txt | head -1
528732

So ~516.33 MiB

After:

root@kmod ~ # /data/linux-next/tools/testing/selftests/kmod/kmod.sh -t 0008
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; log-0008-after.txt ^C

root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r log-0008-after.txt | head -1
442516

So ~432.14 MiB

That's about 84 ~MiB in savings in the worst case. The graphs:

root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='log-0008-before.txt'; fileout='graph-0008-before.txt'" kmod.plot
root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='log-0008-after.txt';  fileout='graph-0008-after.txt'"  kmod.plot

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-0008-before.txt

  580000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  560000 |-+                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A***-|
         |                                                                 |
  540000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |        *A     *AA*AA*A*AA          *A*AA    A*A*A *AA*A*AA*A  A |
  520000 |-+A*A*AA  *AA*A           *A*AA*A*AA     *A*A     A          *A+-|
         |*A                                                               |
  500000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  480000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  460000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |                                                                 |
  440000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  420000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  400000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         0       5        10      15      20      25       30      35      40

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-0008-after.txt

  580000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  560000 |-+                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A***-|
         |                                                                 |
  540000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |                                                                 |
  520000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  500000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  480000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
  460000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |                                                                 |
         |          *A              *A*A                                   |
  440000 |-+A*A*AA*A  A       A*A*AA    A*A*AA*A*AA*A*AA*A*AA*AA*A*AA*A*AA-|
         |*A           *A*AA*A                                             |
  420000 |-+                                                             +-|
         |       +        +       +       +       +        +       +       |
  400000 +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
         0       5        10      15      20      25       30      35      40

The stress-ng module tests:

This is used to run the test to try to reproduce the vmap issues
reported by David:

  echo 0 &gt; /proc/sys/vm/oom_dump_tasks
  ./stress-ng --module 100 --module-name xfs

Prior to this commit:
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; baseline-stress-ng.txt
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r baseline-stress-ng.txt | head -1
5046456

After this commit:
root@kmod ~ # free -k -s 1 -c 40 | grep Mem | awk '{print $3}' &gt; after-stress-ng.txt
root@kmod ~ # sort -n -r after-stress-ng.txt | head -1
4896972

5046456 - 4896972
149484
149484/1024
145.98046875000000000000

So this commit using stress-ng reveals saving about 145 MiB in memory
using 100 ops from stress-ng which reproduced the vmap issue reported.

cat kmod.plot
set term dumb
set output fileout
set yrange [4700000:5070000]
plot filein with linespoints title "Memory usage (KiB)"

root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='baseline-stress-ng.txt'; fileout='graph-stress-ng-before.txt'"  kmod-simple-stress-ng.plot
root@kmod ~ # gnuplot -e "filein='after-stress-ng.txt'; fileout='graph-stress-ng-after.txt'"  kmod-simple-stress-ng.plot

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-stress-ng-before.txt

           +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  5.05e+06 |-+     + A     +       +       +       +       +       +     +-|
           |         *                          Memory usage (KiB) ***A*** |
           |         *                             A                       |
     5e+06 |-+      **                            **                     +-|
           |        **                            * *    A                 |
  4.95e+06 |-+      * *                          A  *   A*               +-|
           |        * *      A       A           *  *  *  *             A  |
           |       *  *     * *     * *        *A   *  *  *      A      *  |
   4.9e+06 |-+     *  *     * A*A   * A*AA*A  A      *A    **A   **A*A  *+-|
           |       A  A*A  A    *  A       *  *      A     A *  A    * **  |
           |      *      **      **         * *              *  *    * * * |
  4.85e+06 |-+   A       A       A          **               *  *     ** *-|
           |     *                           *               * *      ** * |
           |     *                           A               * *      *  * |
   4.8e+06 |-+   *                                           * *      A  A-|
           |     *                                           * *           |
  4.75e+06 |-+  *                                            * *         +-|
           |    *                                            **            |
           |    *  +       +       +       +       +       + **    +       |
   4.7e+06 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
           0       5       10      15      20      25      30      35      40

root@kmod ~ # cat graph-stress-ng-after.txt

           +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  5.05e+06 |-+     +       +       +       +       +       +       +     +-|
           |                                    Memory usage (KiB) ***A*** |
           |                                                               |
     5e+06 |-+                                                           +-|
           |                                                               |
  4.95e+06 |-+                                                           +-|
           |                                                               |
           |                                                               |
   4.9e+06 |-+                                      *AA                  +-|
           |  A*AA*A*A  A  A*AA*AA*A*AA*A  A  A  A*A   *AA*A*A  A  A*AA*AA |
           |  *      * **  *            *  *  ** *            ***  *       |
  4.85e+06 |-+*       ***  *            * * * ***             A *  *     +-|
           |  *       A *  *             ** * * A               *  *       |
           |  *         *  *             *  **                  *  *       |
   4.8e+06 |-+*         *  *             A   *                  *  *     +-|
           | *          * *                  A                  * *        |
  4.75e+06 |-*          * *                                     * *      +-|
           | *          * *                                     * *        |
           | *     +    * *+       +       +       +       +    * *+       |
   4.7e+06 +---------------------------------------------------------------+
           0       5       10      15      20      25      30      35      40

[0] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20221013180518.217405-1-david@redhat.com

Reported-by: David Hildenbrand &lt;david@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain &lt;mcgrof@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
