linux.git/Documentation/sysctl/kernel.txt, branch v3.13

vsprintf: check real user/group id for %pK

2013-11-13T03:09:14+00:00

Some setuid binaries will allow reading of files which have read
permission by the real user id.  This is problematic with files which
use %pK because the file access permission is checked at open() time,
but the kptr_restrict setting is checked at read() time.  If a setuid
binary opens a %pK file as an unprivileged user, and then elevates
permissions before reading the file, then kernel pointer values may be
leaked.

This happens for example with the setuid pppd application on Ubuntu 12.04:

  $ head -1 /proc/kallsyms
  00000000 T startup_32

  $ pppd file /proc/kallsyms
  pppd: In file /proc/kallsyms: unrecognized option 'c1000000'

This will only leak the pointer value from the first line, but other
setuid binaries may leak more information.

Fix this by adding a check that in addition to the current process having
CAP_SYSLOG, that effective user and group ids are equal to the real ids.
If a setuid binary reads the contents of a file which uses %pK then the
pointer values will be printed as NULL if the real user is unprivileged.

Update the sysctl documentation to reflect the changes, and also correct
the documentation to state the kptr_restrict=0 is the default.

This is a only temporary solution to the issue.  The correct solution is
to do the permission check at open() time on files, and to replace %pK
with a function which checks the open() time permission.  %pK uses in
printk should be removed since no sane permission check can be done, and
instead protected by using dmesg_restrict.

Signed-off-by: Ryan Mallon 
Cc: Kees Cook 
Cc: Alexander Viro 
Cc: Joe Perches 
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" 
Cc: 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

sched/numa: Skip some page migrations after a shared fault

2013-10-09T12:48:21+00:00

Shared faults can lead to lots of unnecessary page migrations,
slowing down the system, and causing private faults to hit the
per-pgdat migration ratelimit.

This patch adds sysctl numa_balancing_migrate_deferred, which specifies
how many shared page migrations to skip unconditionally, after each page
migration that is skipped because it is a shared fault.

This reduces the number of page migrations back and forth in
shared fault situations. It also gives a strong preference to
the tasks that are already running where most of the memory is,
and to moving the other tasks to near the memory.

Testing this with a much higher scan rate than the default
still seems to result in fewer page migrations than before.

Memory seems to be somewhat better consolidated than previously,
with multi-instance specjbb runs on a 4 node system.

Signed-off-by: Rik van Riel 
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju 
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-62-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Remove the numa_balancing_scan_period_reset sysctl

2013-10-09T12:48:18+00:00

With scan rate adaptions based on whether the workload has properly
converged or not there should be no need for the scan period reset
hammer. Get rid of it.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju 
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-60-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Favour moving tasks towards the preferred node

2013-10-09T10:40:26+00:00

This patch favours moving tasks towards NUMA node that recorded a higher
number of NUMA faults during active load balancing.  Ideally this is
self-reinforcing as the longer the task runs on that node, the more faults
it should incur causing task_numa_placement to keep the task running on that
node. In reality a big weakness is that the nodes CPUs can be overloaded
and it would be more efficient to queue tasks on an idle node and migrate
to the new node. This would require additional smarts in the balancer so
for now the balancer will simply prefer to place the task on the preferred
node for a PTE scans which is controlled by the numa_balancing_settle_count
sysctl. Once the settle_count number of scans has complete the schedule
is free to place the task on an alternative node if the load is imbalanced.

[srikar@linux.vnet.ibm.com: Fixed statistics]
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju 
[ Tunable and use higher faults instead of preferred. ]
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-23-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

sched/numa: Set the scan rate proportional to the memory usage of the task being scanned

2013-10-09T10:40:20+00:00

The NUMA PTE scan rate is controlled with a combination of the
numa_balancing_scan_period_min, numa_balancing_scan_period_max and
numa_balancing_scan_size. This scan rate is independent of the size
of the task and as an aside it is further complicated by the fact that
numa_balancing_scan_size controls how many pages are marked pte_numa and
not how much virtual memory is scanned.

In combination, it is almost impossible to meaningfully tune the min and
max scan periods and reasoning about performance is complex when the time
to complete a full scan is is partially a function of the tasks memory
size. This patch alters the semantic of the min and max tunables to be
about tuning the length time it takes to complete a scan of a tasks occupied
virtual address space. Conceptually this is a lot easier to understand. There
is a "sanity" check to ensure the scan rate is never extremely fast based on
the amount of virtual memory that should be scanned in a second. The default
of 2.5G seems arbitrary but it is to have the maximum scan rate after the
patch roughly match the maximum scan rate before the patch was applied.

On a similar note, numa_scan_period is in milliseconds and not
jiffies. Properly placed pages slow the scanning rate but adding 10 jiffies
to numa_scan_period means that the rate scanning slows depends on HZ which
is confusing. Get rid of the jiffies_to_msec conversion and treat it as ms.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju 
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-18-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

mm: numa: Document automatic NUMA balancing sysctls

2013-10-09T10:39:20+00:00

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman 
Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Cc: Johannes Weiner 
Cc: Srikar Dronamraju 
Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1381141781-10992-3-git-send-email-mgorman@suse.de
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

coredump: add new %P variable in core_pattern

2013-09-11T22:59:01+00:00

Add a new %P variable to be used in core_pattern.  This variable contains
the global PID (PID in the init namespace) as %p contains the PID in the
current namespace which isn't always what we want.

The main use for this is to make it easier to handle crashes that happened
within a container.  With that new variables it's possible to have the
crashes dumped into the container or forwarded to the host with the right
PID (from the host's point of view).

Signed-off-by: Stéphane Graber 
Reported-by: Hans Feldt 
Cc: Alexander Viro 
Cc: Eric W. Biederman 
Cc: Andy Whitcroft 
Acked-by: Serge E. Hallyn 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

perf: Drop sample rate when sampling is too slow

2013-06-23T09:52:57+00:00

This patch keeps track of how long perf's NMI handler is taking,
and also calculates how many samples perf can take a second.  If
the sample length times the expected max number of samples
exceeds a configurable threshold, it drops the sample rate.

This way, we don't have a runaway sampling process eating up the
CPU.

This patch can tend to drop the sample rate down to level where
perf doesn't work very well.  *BUT* the alternative is that my
system hangs because it spends all of its time handling NMIs.

I'll take a busted performance tool over an entire system that's
busted and undebuggable any day.

BTW, my suspicion is that there's still an underlying bug here.
Using the HPET instead of the TSC is definitely a contributing
factor, but I suspect there are some other things going on.
But, I can't go dig down on a bug like that with my machine
hanging all the time.

Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen 
Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra 
Cc: paulus@samba.org
Cc: acme@ghostprotocols.net
Cc: Dave Hansen 
[ Prettified it a bit. ]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

watchdog: Remove softlockup_thresh from Documentation

2013-05-28T09:28:20+00:00

The old softlockup detector has been replaced with new lockup
detector long ago.

Signed-off-by: Li Zefan 
Acked-by: Don Zickus 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/51959687.9090305@huawei.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar

watchdog: Document watchdog_thresh sysctl

2013-05-28T09:28:19+00:00

Signed-off-by: Li Zefan 
Acked-by: Don Zickus 
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/51959678.6000802@huawei.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar