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linux/init/Kconfig

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config DEFCONFIG_LIST
string
[PATCH] uml: use DEFCONFIG_LIST to avoid reading host's config This should make sure that, for UML, host's configuration files are not considered, which avoids various pains to the user. Our dependency are such that the obtained Kconfig will be valid and will lead to successful compilation - however they cannot prevent an user from disabling any boot device, and if an option is not set in the read .config (say /boot/config-XXX), with make menuconfig ARCH=um, it is not set. This always disables UBD and all console I/O channels, which leads to non-working UML kernels, so this bothers users - especially now, since it will happen on almost every machine (/boot/config-`uname -r` exists almost on every machine). It can be workarounded with make defconfig ARCH=um, but it is non-obvious and can be avoided, so please _do_ merge this patch. Given the existence of options, it could be interesting to implement (additionally) "option required" - with it, Kconfig will refuse reading a .config file (from wherever it comes) if the given option is not set. With this, one could mark with it the option characteristic of the given architecture (it was an old proposal of Roman Zippel, when I pointed out our problem): config UML option required default y However this should be further discussed: *) for x86, it must support constructs like: ==arch/i386/Kconfig== config 64BIT option required default n where Kconfig must require that CONFIG_64BIT is disabled or not present in the read .config. *) do we want to do such checks only for the starting defconfig or also for .config? Which leads to: *) I may want to port a x86_64 .config to x86 and viceversa, or even among more different archs. Should that be allowed, and in which measure (the user may force skipping the check for a .config or it is only given a warning by default)? Cc: Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org> Cc: <kbuild-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> Signed-off-by: Paolo 'Blaisorblade' Giarrusso <blaisorblade@yahoo.it> Cc: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-10-19 23:28:23 -07:00
depends on !UML
option defconfig_list
default "/lib/modules/$UNAME_RELEASE/.config"
default "/etc/kernel-config"
default "/boot/config-$UNAME_RELEASE"
default "arch/$ARCH/defconfig"
menu "General setup"
config EXPERIMENTAL
bool "Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers"
---help---
Some of the various things that Linux supports (such as network
drivers, file systems, network protocols, etc.) can be in a state
of development where the functionality, stability, or the level of
testing is not yet high enough for general use. This is usually
known as the "alpha-test" phase among developers. If a feature is
currently in alpha-test, then the developers usually discourage
uninformed widespread use of this feature by the general public to
avoid "Why doesn't this work?" type mail messages. However, active
testing and use of these systems is welcomed. Just be aware that it
may not meet the normal level of reliability or it may fail to work
in some special cases. Detailed bug reports from people familiar
with the kernel internals are usually welcomed by the developers
(before submitting bug reports, please read the documents
<file:README>, <file:MAINTAINERS>, <file:REPORTING-BUGS>,
<file:Documentation/BUG-HUNTING>, and
<file:Documentation/oops-tracing.txt> in the kernel source).
This option will also make obsoleted drivers available. These are
drivers that have been replaced by something else, and/or are
scheduled to be removed in a future kernel release.
Unless you intend to help test and develop a feature or driver that
falls into this category, or you have a situation that requires
using these features, you should probably say N here, which will
cause the configurator to present you with fewer choices. If
you say Y here, you will be offered the choice of using features or
drivers that are currently considered to be in the alpha-test phase.
config BROKEN
bool
config BROKEN_ON_SMP
bool
depends on BROKEN || !SMP
default y
config LOCK_KERNEL
bool
depends on SMP || PREEMPT
default y
config INIT_ENV_ARG_LIMIT
int
default 32 if !UML
default 128 if UML
help
Maximum of each of the number of arguments and environment
variables passed to init from the kernel command line.
config LOCALVERSION
string "Local version - append to kernel release"
help
Append an extra string to the end of your kernel version.
This will show up when you type uname, for example.
The string you set here will be appended after the contents of
any files with a filename matching localversion* in your
object and source tree, in that order. Your total string can
be a maximum of 64 characters.
config LOCALVERSION_AUTO
bool "Automatically append version information to the version string"
default y
help
This will try to automatically determine if the current tree is a
release tree by looking for git tags that belong to the current
top of tree revision.
A string of the format -gxxxxxxxx will be added to the localversion
if a git-based tree is found. The string generated by this will be
appended after any matching localversion* files, and after the value
set in CONFIG_LOCALVERSION.
(The actual string used here is the first eight characters produced
by running the command:
$ git rev-parse --verify HEAD
which is done within the script "scripts/setlocalversion".)
config SWAP
bool "Support for paging of anonymous memory (swap)"
[PATCH] BLOCK: Make it possible to disable the block layer [try #6] Make it possible to disable the block layer. Not all embedded devices require it, some can make do with just JFFS2, NFS, ramfs, etc - none of which require the block layer to be present. This patch does the following: (*) Introduces CONFIG_BLOCK to disable the block layer, buffering and blockdev support. (*) Adds dependencies on CONFIG_BLOCK to any configuration item that controls an item that uses the block layer. This includes: (*) Block I/O tracing. (*) Disk partition code. (*) All filesystems that are block based, eg: Ext3, ReiserFS, ISOFS. (*) The SCSI layer. As far as I can tell, even SCSI chardevs use the block layer to do scheduling. Some drivers that use SCSI facilities - such as USB storage - end up disabled indirectly from this. (*) Various block-based device drivers, such as IDE and the old CDROM drivers. (*) MTD blockdev handling and FTL. (*) JFFS - which uses set_bdev_super(), something it could avoid doing by taking a leaf out of JFFS2's book. (*) Makes most of the contents of linux/blkdev.h, linux/buffer_head.h and linux/elevator.h contingent on CONFIG_BLOCK being set. sector_div() is, however, still used in places, and so is still available. (*) Also made contingent are the contents of linux/mpage.h, linux/genhd.h and parts of linux/fs.h. (*) Makes a number of files in fs/ contingent on CONFIG_BLOCK. (*) Makes mm/bounce.c (bounce buffering) contingent on CONFIG_BLOCK. (*) set_page_dirty() doesn't call __set_page_dirty_buffers() if CONFIG_BLOCK is not enabled. (*) fs/no-block.c is created to hold out-of-line stubs and things that are required when CONFIG_BLOCK is not set: (*) Default blockdev file operations (to give error ENODEV on opening). (*) Makes some /proc changes: (*) /proc/devices does not list any blockdevs. (*) /proc/diskstats and /proc/partitions are contingent on CONFIG_BLOCK. (*) Makes some compat ioctl handling contingent on CONFIG_BLOCK. (*) If CONFIG_BLOCK is not defined, makes sys_quotactl() return -ENODEV if given command other than Q_SYNC or if a special device is specified. (*) In init/do_mounts.c, no reference is made to the blockdev routines if CONFIG_BLOCK is not defined. This does not prohibit NFS roots or JFFS2. (*) The bdflush, ioprio_set and ioprio_get syscalls can now be absent (return error ENOSYS by way of cond_syscall if so). (*) The seclvl_bd_claim() and seclvl_bd_release() security calls do nothing if CONFIG_BLOCK is not set, since they can't then happen. Signed-Off-By: David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
2006-09-30 11:45:40 -07:00
depends on MMU && BLOCK
default y
help
This option allows you to choose whether you want to have support
for so called swap devices or swap files in your kernel that are
used to provide more virtual memory than the actual RAM present
in your computer. If unsure say Y.
config SYSVIPC
bool "System V IPC"
---help---
Inter Process Communication is a suite of library functions and
system calls which let processes (running programs) synchronize and
exchange information. It is generally considered to be a good thing,
and some programs won't run unless you say Y here. In particular, if
you want to run the DOS emulator dosemu under Linux (read the
DOSEMU-HOWTO, available from <http://www.tldp.org/docs.html#howto>),
you'll need to say Y here.
You can find documentation about IPC with "info ipc" and also in
section 6.4 of the Linux Programmer's Guide, available from
<http://www.tldp.org/guides.html>.
config SYSVIPC_SYSCTL
bool
depends on SYSVIPC
depends on SYSCTL
default y
config POSIX_MQUEUE
bool "POSIX Message Queues"
depends on NET && EXPERIMENTAL
---help---
POSIX variant of message queues is a part of IPC. In POSIX message
queues every message has a priority which decides about succession
of receiving it by a process. If you want to compile and run
programs written e.g. for Solaris with use of its POSIX message
queues (functions mq_*) say Y here.
POSIX message queues are visible as a filesystem called 'mqueue'
and can be mounted somewhere if you want to do filesystem
operations on message queues.
If unsure, say Y.
config BSD_PROCESS_ACCT
bool "BSD Process Accounting"
help
If you say Y here, a user level program will be able to instruct the
kernel (via a special system call) to write process accounting
information to a file: whenever a process exits, information about
that process will be appended to the file by the kernel. The
information includes things such as creation time, owning user,
command name, memory usage, controlling terminal etc. (the complete
list is in the struct acct in <file:include/linux/acct.h>). It is
up to the user level program to do useful things with this
information. This is generally a good idea, so say Y.
config BSD_PROCESS_ACCT_V3
bool "BSD Process Accounting version 3 file format"
depends on BSD_PROCESS_ACCT
default n
help
If you say Y here, the process accounting information is written
in a new file format that also logs the process IDs of each
process and it's parent. Note that this file format is incompatible
with previous v0/v1/v2 file formats, so you will need updated tools
for processing it. A preliminary version of these tools is available
at <http://www.physik3.uni-rostock.de/tim/kernel/utils/acct/>.
config TASKSTATS
bool "Export task/process statistics through netlink (EXPERIMENTAL)"
depends on NET
default n
help
Export selected statistics for tasks/processes through the
generic netlink interface. Unlike BSD process accounting, the
statistics are available during the lifetime of tasks/processes as
responses to commands. Like BSD accounting, they are sent to user
space on task exit.
Say N if unsure.
config TASK_DELAY_ACCT
bool "Enable per-task delay accounting (EXPERIMENTAL)"
depends on TASKSTATS
help
Collect information on time spent by a task waiting for system
resources like cpu, synchronous block I/O completion and swapping
in pages. Such statistics can help in setting a task's priorities
relative to other tasks for cpu, io, rss limits etc.
Say N if unsure.
config TASK_XACCT
bool "Enable extended accounting over taskstats (EXPERIMENTAL)"
depends on TASKSTATS
help
Collect extended task accounting data and send the data
to userland for processing over the taskstats interface.
Say N if unsure.
config TASK_IO_ACCOUNTING
bool "Enable per-task storage I/O accounting (EXPERIMENTAL)"
depends on TASK_XACCT
help
Collect information on the number of bytes of storage I/O which this
task has caused.
Say N if unsure.
config USER_NS
bool "User Namespaces (EXPERIMENTAL)"
default n
depends on EXPERIMENTAL
help
Support user namespaces. This allows containers, i.e.
vservers, to use user namespaces to provide different
user info for different servers. If unsure, say N.
config PID_NS
bool "PID Namespaces (EXPERIMENTAL)"
default n
depends on EXPERIMENTAL
help
Suport process id namespaces. This allows having multiple
process with the same pid as long as they are in different
pid namespaces. This is a building block of containers.
Unless you want to work with an experimental feature
say N here.
config AUDIT
bool "Auditing support"
depends on NET
help
Enable auditing infrastructure that can be used with another
kernel subsystem, such as SELinux (which requires this for
logging of avc messages output). Does not do system-call
auditing without CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL.
config AUDITSYSCALL
bool "Enable system-call auditing support"
depends on AUDIT && (X86 || PPC || PPC64 || S390 || IA64 || UML || SPARC64)
default y if SECURITY_SELINUX
help
Enable low-overhead system-call auditing infrastructure that
can be used independently or with another kernel subsystem,
such as SELinux. To use audit's filesystem watch feature, please
ensure that INOTIFY is configured.
config AUDIT_TREE
def_bool y
depends on AUDITSYSCALL && INOTIFY
config IKCONFIG
tristate "Kernel .config support"
---help---
This option enables the complete Linux kernel ".config" file
contents to be saved in the kernel. It provides documentation
of which kernel options are used in a running kernel or in an
on-disk kernel. This information can be extracted from the kernel
image file with the script scripts/extract-ikconfig and used as
input to rebuild the current kernel or to build another kernel.
It can also be extracted from a running kernel by reading
/proc/config.gz if enabled (below).
config IKCONFIG_PROC
bool "Enable access to .config through /proc/config.gz"
depends on IKCONFIG && PROC_FS
---help---
This option enables access to the kernel configuration file
through /proc/config.gz.
config LOG_BUF_SHIFT
int "Kernel log buffer size (16 => 64KB, 17 => 128KB)"
range 12 21
default 17 if S390 || LOCKDEP
default 16 if X86_NUMAQ || IA64
default 15 if SMP
default 14
help
Select kernel log buffer size as a power of 2.
Defaults and Examples:
17 => 128 KB for S/390
16 => 64 KB for x86 NUMAQ or IA-64
15 => 32 KB for SMP
14 => 16 KB for uniprocessor
13 => 8 KB
12 => 4 KB
Task Control Groups: basic task cgroup framework Generic Process Control Groups -------------------------- There have recently been various proposals floating around for resource management/accounting and other task grouping subsystems in the kernel, including ResGroups, User BeanCounters, NSProxy cgroups, and others. These all need the basic abstraction of being able to group together multiple processes in an aggregate, in order to track/limit the resources permitted to those processes, or control other behaviour of the processes, and all implement this grouping in different ways. This patchset provides a framework for tracking and grouping processes into arbitrary "cgroups" and assigning arbitrary state to those groupings, in order to control the behaviour of the cgroup as an aggregate. The intention is that the various resource management and virtualization/cgroup efforts can also become task cgroup clients, with the result that: - the userspace APIs are (somewhat) normalised - it's easier to test e.g. the ResGroups CPU controller in conjunction with the BeanCounters memory controller, or use either of them as the resource-control portion of a virtual server system. - the additional kernel footprint of any of the competing resource management systems is substantially reduced, since it doesn't need to provide process grouping/containment, hence improving their chances of getting into the kernel This patch: Add the main task cgroups framework - the cgroup filesystem, and the basic structures for tracking membership and associating subsystem state objects to tasks. Signed-off-by: Paul Menage <menage@google.com> Cc: Serge E. Hallyn <serue@us.ibm.com> Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com> Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com> Cc: Balbir Singh <balbir@in.ibm.com> Cc: Paul Jackson <pj@sgi.com> Cc: Kirill Korotaev <dev@openvz.org> Cc: Herbert Poetzl <herbert@13thfloor.at> Cc: Srivatsa Vaddagiri <vatsa@in.ibm.com> Cc: Cedric Le Goater <clg@fr.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-10-18 23:39:30 -07:00
config CGROUPS
bool "Control Group support"
help
This option will let you use process cgroup subsystems
such as Cpusets
Say N if unsure.
config CGROUP_DEBUG
bool "Example debug cgroup subsystem"
depends on CGROUPS
help
This option enables a simple cgroup subsystem that
exports useful debugging information about the cgroups
framework
Say N if unsure
config CGROUP_NS
bool "Namespace cgroup subsystem"
depends on CGROUPS
help
Provides a simple namespace cgroup subsystem to
provide hierarchical naming of sets of namespaces,
for instance virtual servers and checkpoint/restart
jobs.
config CPUSETS
bool "Cpuset support"
depends on SMP && CGROUPS
help
This option will let you create and manage CPUSETs which
allow dynamically partitioning a system into sets of CPUs and
Memory Nodes and assigning tasks to run only within those sets.
This is primarily useful on large SMP or NUMA systems.
Say N if unsure.
config FAIR_GROUP_SCHED
bool "Fair group CPU scheduler"
default y
help
This feature lets CPU scheduler recognize task groups and control CPU
bandwidth allocation to such task groups.
choice
depends on FAIR_GROUP_SCHED
prompt "Basis for grouping tasks"
default FAIR_USER_SCHED
config FAIR_USER_SCHED
bool "user id"
help
This option will choose userid as the basis for grouping
tasks, thus providing equal CPU bandwidth to each user.
config FAIR_CGROUP_SCHED
bool "Control groups"
depends on CGROUPS
help
This option allows you to create arbitrary task groups
using the "cgroup" pseudo filesystem and control
the cpu bandwidth allocated to each such task group.
Refer to Documentation/cgroups.txt for more information
on "cgroup" pseudo filesystem.
endchoice
sched: cpu accounting controller (V2) Commit cfb5285660aad4931b2ebbfa902ea48a37dfffa1 removed a useful feature for us, which provided a cpu accounting resource controller. This feature would be useful if someone wants to group tasks only for accounting purpose and doesnt really want to exercise any control over their cpu consumption. The patch below reintroduces the feature. It is based on Paul Menage's original patch (Commit 62d0df64065e7c135d0002f069444fbdfc64768f), with these differences: - Removed load average information. I felt it needs more thought (esp to deal with SMP and virtualized platforms) and can be added for 2.6.25 after more discussions. - Convert group cpu usage to be nanosecond accurate (as rest of the cfs stats are) and invoke cpuacct_charge() from the respective scheduler classes - Make accounting scalable on SMP systems by splitting the usage counter to be per-cpu - Move the code from kernel/cpu_acct.c to kernel/sched.c (since the code is not big enough to warrant a new file and also this rightly needs to live inside the scheduler. Also things like accessing rq->lock while reading cpu usage becomes easier if the code lived in kernel/sched.c) The patch also modifies the cpu controller not to provide the same accounting information. Tested-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Tested the patches on top of 2.6.24-rc3. The patches work fine. Ran some simple tests like cpuspin (spin on the cpu), ran several tasks in the same group and timed them. Compared their time stamps with cpuacct.usage. Signed-off-by: Srivatsa Vaddagiri <vatsa@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Balbir Singh <balbir@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
2007-12-02 12:04:49 -07:00
config CGROUP_CPUACCT
bool "Simple CPU accounting cgroup subsystem"
depends on CGROUPS
help
Provides a simple Resource Controller for monitoring the
total CPU consumed by the tasks in a cgroup
config SYSFS_DEPRECATED
bool "Create deprecated sysfs files"
default y
help
This option creates deprecated symlinks such as the
"device"-link, the <subsystem>:<name>-link, and the
"bus"-link. It may also add deprecated key in the
uevent environment.
None of these features or values should be used today, as
they export driver core implementation details to userspace
or export properties which can't be kept stable across kernel
releases.
If enabled, this option will also move any device structures
that belong to a class, back into the /sys/class hierarchy, in
order to support older versions of udev.
If you are using a distro that was released in 2006 or later,
it should be safe to say N here.
config PROC_PID_CPUSET
bool "Include legacy /proc/<pid>/cpuset file"
depends on CPUSETS
default y
config RELAY
bool "Kernel->user space relay support (formerly relayfs)"
help
This option enables support for relay interface support in
certain file systems (such as debugfs).
It is designed to provide an efficient mechanism for tools and
facilities to relay large amounts of data from kernel space to
user space.
If unsure, say N.
config BLK_DEV_INITRD
bool "Initial RAM filesystem and RAM disk (initramfs/initrd) support"
depends on BROKEN || !FRV
help
The initial RAM filesystem is a ramfs which is loaded by the
boot loader (loadlin or lilo) and that is mounted as root
before the normal boot procedure. It is typically used to
load modules needed to mount the "real" root file system,
etc. See <file:Documentation/initrd.txt> for details.
If RAM disk support (BLK_DEV_RAM) is also included, this
also enables initial RAM disk (initrd) support and adds
15 Kbytes (more on some other architectures) to the kernel size.
If unsure say Y.
if BLK_DEV_INITRD
source "usr/Kconfig"
endif
config CC_OPTIMIZE_FOR_SIZE
bool "Optimize for size (Look out for broken compilers!)"
default y
depends on ARM || H8300 || SUPERH || EXPERIMENTAL
help
Enabling this option will pass "-Os" instead of "-O2" to gcc
resulting in a smaller kernel.
WARNING: some versions of gcc may generate incorrect code with this
option. If problems are observed, a gcc upgrade may be needed.
If unsure, say N.
config SYSCTL
bool
menuconfig EMBEDDED
bool "Configure standard kernel features (for small systems)"
help
This option allows certain base kernel options and settings
to be disabled or tweaked. This is for specialized
environments which can tolerate a "non-standard" kernel.
Only use this if you really know what you are doing.
config UID16
bool "Enable 16-bit UID system calls" if EMBEDDED
depends on ARM || BLACKFIN || CRIS || FRV || H8300 || X86_32 || M68K || (S390 && !64BIT) || SUPERH || SPARC32 || (SPARC64 && SPARC32_COMPAT) || UML || (X86_64 && IA32_EMULATION)
default y
help
This enables the legacy 16-bit UID syscall wrappers.
config SYSCTL_SYSCALL
bool "Sysctl syscall support" if EMBEDDED
[PATCH] sysctl: Undeprecate sys_sysctl The basic issue is that despite have been deprecated and warned about as a very bad thing in the man pages since its inception there are a few real users of sys_sysctl. It was my assumption that because sysctl had been deprecated for all of 2.6 there would be no user space users by this point, so I initially gave sys_sysctl a very short deprecation period. Now that I know there are a few real users the only sane way to proceed with deprecation is to push the time limit out to a year or two work and work with distributions that have big testing pools like fedora core to find these last remaining users. Which means that the sys_sysctl interface needs to be maintained in the meantime. Since I have provided a technical measure that allows us to add new sysctl entries without reserving more binary numbers I believe that is enough to fix the sys_sysctl binary interface maintenance problems, because there is no longer a need to change the binary interface at all. Since the sys_sysctl implementation needs to stay around for a while and the worst of the maintenance issues that caused us to occasionally break the ABI have been addressed I don't see any advantage in continuing with the removal of sys_sysctl. So instead of merely increasing the deprecation period this patch removes the deprecation of sys_sysctl and modifies the kernel to compile the code in by default. With committing to maintain sys_sysctl we get all of the advantages of a fast interface for anything that needs it. Currently sys_sysctl is about 5x faster than /proc/sys, for the same string data. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Acked-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-11-08 18:44:51 -07:00
default y
select SYSCTL
---help---
[PATCH] sysctl: Undeprecate sys_sysctl The basic issue is that despite have been deprecated and warned about as a very bad thing in the man pages since its inception there are a few real users of sys_sysctl. It was my assumption that because sysctl had been deprecated for all of 2.6 there would be no user space users by this point, so I initially gave sys_sysctl a very short deprecation period. Now that I know there are a few real users the only sane way to proceed with deprecation is to push the time limit out to a year or two work and work with distributions that have big testing pools like fedora core to find these last remaining users. Which means that the sys_sysctl interface needs to be maintained in the meantime. Since I have provided a technical measure that allows us to add new sysctl entries without reserving more binary numbers I believe that is enough to fix the sys_sysctl binary interface maintenance problems, because there is no longer a need to change the binary interface at all. Since the sys_sysctl implementation needs to stay around for a while and the worst of the maintenance issues that caused us to occasionally break the ABI have been addressed I don't see any advantage in continuing with the removal of sys_sysctl. So instead of merely increasing the deprecation period this patch removes the deprecation of sys_sysctl and modifies the kernel to compile the code in by default. With committing to maintain sys_sysctl we get all of the advantages of a fast interface for anything that needs it. Currently sys_sysctl is about 5x faster than /proc/sys, for the same string data. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Acked-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-11-08 18:44:51 -07:00
sys_sysctl uses binary paths that have been found challenging
to properly maintain and use. The interface in /proc/sys
using paths with ascii names is now the primary path to this
information.
[PATCH] sysctl: Undeprecate sys_sysctl The basic issue is that despite have been deprecated and warned about as a very bad thing in the man pages since its inception there are a few real users of sys_sysctl. It was my assumption that because sysctl had been deprecated for all of 2.6 there would be no user space users by this point, so I initially gave sys_sysctl a very short deprecation period. Now that I know there are a few real users the only sane way to proceed with deprecation is to push the time limit out to a year or two work and work with distributions that have big testing pools like fedora core to find these last remaining users. Which means that the sys_sysctl interface needs to be maintained in the meantime. Since I have provided a technical measure that allows us to add new sysctl entries without reserving more binary numbers I believe that is enough to fix the sys_sysctl binary interface maintenance problems, because there is no longer a need to change the binary interface at all. Since the sys_sysctl implementation needs to stay around for a while and the worst of the maintenance issues that caused us to occasionally break the ABI have been addressed I don't see any advantage in continuing with the removal of sys_sysctl. So instead of merely increasing the deprecation period this patch removes the deprecation of sys_sysctl and modifies the kernel to compile the code in by default. With committing to maintain sys_sysctl we get all of the advantages of a fast interface for anything that needs it. Currently sys_sysctl is about 5x faster than /proc/sys, for the same string data. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Acked-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-11-08 18:44:51 -07:00
Almost nothing using the binary sysctl interface so if you are
trying to save some space it is probably safe to disable this,
making your kernel marginally smaller.
[PATCH] sysctl: Undeprecate sys_sysctl The basic issue is that despite have been deprecated and warned about as a very bad thing in the man pages since its inception there are a few real users of sys_sysctl. It was my assumption that because sysctl had been deprecated for all of 2.6 there would be no user space users by this point, so I initially gave sys_sysctl a very short deprecation period. Now that I know there are a few real users the only sane way to proceed with deprecation is to push the time limit out to a year or two work and work with distributions that have big testing pools like fedora core to find these last remaining users. Which means that the sys_sysctl interface needs to be maintained in the meantime. Since I have provided a technical measure that allows us to add new sysctl entries without reserving more binary numbers I believe that is enough to fix the sys_sysctl binary interface maintenance problems, because there is no longer a need to change the binary interface at all. Since the sys_sysctl implementation needs to stay around for a while and the worst of the maintenance issues that caused us to occasionally break the ABI have been addressed I don't see any advantage in continuing with the removal of sys_sysctl. So instead of merely increasing the deprecation period this patch removes the deprecation of sys_sysctl and modifies the kernel to compile the code in by default. With committing to maintain sys_sysctl we get all of the advantages of a fast interface for anything that needs it. Currently sys_sysctl is about 5x faster than /proc/sys, for the same string data. Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> Acked-by: Alan Cox <alan@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-11-08 18:44:51 -07:00
If unsure say Y here.
config KALLSYMS
bool "Load all symbols for debugging/ksymoops" if EMBEDDED
default y
help
Say Y here to let the kernel print out symbolic crash information and
symbolic stack backtraces. This increases the size of the kernel
somewhat, as all symbols have to be loaded into the kernel image.
config KALLSYMS_ALL
bool "Include all symbols in kallsyms"
depends on DEBUG_KERNEL && KALLSYMS
help
Normally kallsyms only contains the symbols of functions, for nicer
OOPS messages. Some debuggers can use kallsyms for other
symbols too: say Y here to include all symbols, if you need them
and you don't care about adding 300k to the size of your kernel.
Say N.
config KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS
bool "Do an extra kallsyms pass"
depends on KALLSYMS
help
If kallsyms is not working correctly, the build will fail with
inconsistent kallsyms data. If that occurs, log a bug report and
turn on KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS which should result in a stable build.
Always say N here unless you find a bug in kallsyms, which must be
reported. KALLSYMS_EXTRA_PASS is only a temporary workaround while
you wait for kallsyms to be fixed.
config HOTPLUG
bool "Support for hot-pluggable devices" if EMBEDDED
default y
help
This option is provided for the case where no hotplug or uevent
capabilities is wanted by the kernel. You should only consider
disabling this option for embedded systems that do not use modules, a
dynamic /dev tree, or dynamic device discovery. Just say Y.
config PRINTK
default y
bool "Enable support for printk" if EMBEDDED
help
This option enables normal printk support. Removing it
eliminates most of the message strings from the kernel image
and makes the kernel more or less silent. As this makes it
very difficult to diagnose system problems, saying N here is
strongly discouraged.
config BUG
bool "BUG() support" if EMBEDDED
default y
help
Disabling this option eliminates support for BUG and WARN, reducing
the size of your kernel image and potentially quietly ignoring
numerous fatal conditions. You should only consider disabling this
option for embedded systems with no facilities for reporting errors.
Just say Y.
config ELF_CORE
default y
bool "Enable ELF core dumps" if EMBEDDED
help
Enable support for generating core dumps. Disabling saves about 4k.
config BASE_FULL
default y
bool "Enable full-sized data structures for core" if EMBEDDED
help
Disabling this option reduces the size of miscellaneous core
kernel data structures. This saves memory on small machines,
but may reduce performance.
config FUTEX
bool "Enable futex support" if EMBEDDED
default y
select RT_MUTEXES
help
Disabling this option will cause the kernel to be built without
support for "fast userspace mutexes". The resulting kernel may not
run glibc-based applications correctly.
config ANON_INODES
bool
config EPOLL
bool "Enable eventpoll support" if EMBEDDED
default y
select ANON_INODES
help
Disabling this option will cause the kernel to be built without
support for epoll family of system calls.
signal/timer/event: signalfd core This patch series implements the new signalfd() system call. I took part of the original Linus code (and you know how badly it can be broken :), and I added even more breakage ;) Signals are fetched from the same signal queue used by the process, so signalfd will compete with standard kernel delivery in dequeue_signal(). If you want to reliably fetch signals on the signalfd file, you need to block them with sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK). This seems to be working fine on my Dual Opteron machine. I made a quick test program for it: http://www.xmailserver.org/signafd-test.c The signalfd() system call implements signal delivery into a file descriptor receiver. The signalfd file descriptor if created with the following API: int signalfd(int ufd, const sigset_t *mask, size_t masksize); The "ufd" parameter allows to change an existing signalfd sigmask, w/out going to close/create cycle (Linus idea). Use "ufd" == -1 if you want a brand new signalfd file. The "mask" allows to specify the signal mask of signals that we are interested in. The "masksize" parameter is the size of "mask". The signalfd fd supports the poll(2) and read(2) system calls. The poll(2) will return POLLIN when signals are available to be dequeued. As a direct consequence of supporting the Linux poll subsystem, the signalfd fd can use used together with epoll(2) too. The read(2) system call will return a "struct signalfd_siginfo" structure in the userspace supplied buffer. The return value is the number of bytes copied in the supplied buffer, or -1 in case of error. The read(2) call can also return 0, in case the sighand structure to which the signalfd was attached, has been orphaned. The O_NONBLOCK flag is also supported, and read(2) will return -EAGAIN in case no signal is available. If the size of the buffer passed to read(2) is lower than sizeof(struct signalfd_siginfo), -EINVAL is returned. A read from the signalfd can also return -ERESTARTSYS in case a signal hits the process. The format of the struct signalfd_siginfo is, and the valid fields depends of the (->code & __SI_MASK) value, in the same way a struct siginfo would: struct signalfd_siginfo { __u32 signo; /* si_signo */ __s32 err; /* si_errno */ __s32 code; /* si_code */ __u32 pid; /* si_pid */ __u32 uid; /* si_uid */ __s32 fd; /* si_fd */ __u32 tid; /* si_fd */ __u32 band; /* si_band */ __u32 overrun; /* si_overrun */ __u32 trapno; /* si_trapno */ __s32 status; /* si_status */ __s32 svint; /* si_int */ __u64 svptr; /* si_ptr */ __u64 utime; /* si_utime */ __u64 stime; /* si_stime */ __u64 addr; /* si_addr */ }; [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix signalfd_copyinfo() on i386] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:13 -07:00
config SIGNALFD
bool "Enable signalfd() system call" if EMBEDDED
select ANON_INODES
signal/timer/event: signalfd core This patch series implements the new signalfd() system call. I took part of the original Linus code (and you know how badly it can be broken :), and I added even more breakage ;) Signals are fetched from the same signal queue used by the process, so signalfd will compete with standard kernel delivery in dequeue_signal(). If you want to reliably fetch signals on the signalfd file, you need to block them with sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK). This seems to be working fine on my Dual Opteron machine. I made a quick test program for it: http://www.xmailserver.org/signafd-test.c The signalfd() system call implements signal delivery into a file descriptor receiver. The signalfd file descriptor if created with the following API: int signalfd(int ufd, const sigset_t *mask, size_t masksize); The "ufd" parameter allows to change an existing signalfd sigmask, w/out going to close/create cycle (Linus idea). Use "ufd" == -1 if you want a brand new signalfd file. The "mask" allows to specify the signal mask of signals that we are interested in. The "masksize" parameter is the size of "mask". The signalfd fd supports the poll(2) and read(2) system calls. The poll(2) will return POLLIN when signals are available to be dequeued. As a direct consequence of supporting the Linux poll subsystem, the signalfd fd can use used together with epoll(2) too. The read(2) system call will return a "struct signalfd_siginfo" structure in the userspace supplied buffer. The return value is the number of bytes copied in the supplied buffer, or -1 in case of error. The read(2) call can also return 0, in case the sighand structure to which the signalfd was attached, has been orphaned. The O_NONBLOCK flag is also supported, and read(2) will return -EAGAIN in case no signal is available. If the size of the buffer passed to read(2) is lower than sizeof(struct signalfd_siginfo), -EINVAL is returned. A read from the signalfd can also return -ERESTARTSYS in case a signal hits the process. The format of the struct signalfd_siginfo is, and the valid fields depends of the (->code & __SI_MASK) value, in the same way a struct siginfo would: struct signalfd_siginfo { __u32 signo; /* si_signo */ __s32 err; /* si_errno */ __s32 code; /* si_code */ __u32 pid; /* si_pid */ __u32 uid; /* si_uid */ __s32 fd; /* si_fd */ __u32 tid; /* si_fd */ __u32 band; /* si_band */ __u32 overrun; /* si_overrun */ __u32 trapno; /* si_trapno */ __s32 status; /* si_status */ __s32 svint; /* si_int */ __u64 svptr; /* si_ptr */ __u64 utime; /* si_utime */ __u64 stime; /* si_stime */ __u64 addr; /* si_addr */ }; [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix signalfd_copyinfo() on i386] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:13 -07:00
default y
help
Enable the signalfd() system call that allows to receive signals
on a file descriptor.
If unsure, say Y.
signal/timer/event: timerfd core This patch introduces a new system call for timers events delivered though file descriptors. This allows timer event to be used with standard POSIX poll(2), select(2) and read(2). As a consequence of supporting the Linux f_op->poll subsystem, they can be used with epoll(2) too. The system call is defined as: int timerfd(int ufd, int clockid, int flags, const struct itimerspec *utmr); The "ufd" parameter allows for re-use (re-programming) of an existing timerfd w/out going through the close/open cycle (same as signalfd). If "ufd" is -1, s new file descriptor will be created, otherwise the existing "ufd" will be re-programmed. The "clockid" parameter is either CLOCK_MONOTONIC or CLOCK_REALTIME. The time specified in the "utmr->it_value" parameter is the expiry time for the timer. If the TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME flag is set in "flags", this is an absolute time, otherwise it's a relative time. If the time specified in the "utmr->it_interval" is not zero (.tv_sec == 0, tv_nsec == 0), this is the period at which the following ticks should be generated. The "utmr->it_interval" should be set to zero if only one tick is requested. Setting the "utmr->it_value" to zero will disable the timer, or will create a timerfd without the timer enabled. The function returns the new (or same, in case "ufd" is a valid timerfd descriptor) file, or -1 in case of error. As stated before, the timerfd file descriptor supports poll(2), select(2) and epoll(2). When a timer event happened on the timerfd, a POLLIN mask will be returned. The read(2) call can be used, and it will return a u32 variable holding the number of "ticks" that happened on the interface since the last call to read(2). The read(2) call supportes the O_NONBLOCK flag too, and EAGAIN will be returned if no ticks happened. A quick test program, shows timerfd working correctly on my amd64 box: http://www.xmailserver.org/timerfd-test.c [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_timerfd to sys_ni.c] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:16 -07:00
config TIMERFD
bool "Enable timerfd() system call" if EMBEDDED
select ANON_INODES
depends on BROKEN
signal/timer/event: timerfd core This patch introduces a new system call for timers events delivered though file descriptors. This allows timer event to be used with standard POSIX poll(2), select(2) and read(2). As a consequence of supporting the Linux f_op->poll subsystem, they can be used with epoll(2) too. The system call is defined as: int timerfd(int ufd, int clockid, int flags, const struct itimerspec *utmr); The "ufd" parameter allows for re-use (re-programming) of an existing timerfd w/out going through the close/open cycle (same as signalfd). If "ufd" is -1, s new file descriptor will be created, otherwise the existing "ufd" will be re-programmed. The "clockid" parameter is either CLOCK_MONOTONIC or CLOCK_REALTIME. The time specified in the "utmr->it_value" parameter is the expiry time for the timer. If the TFD_TIMER_ABSTIME flag is set in "flags", this is an absolute time, otherwise it's a relative time. If the time specified in the "utmr->it_interval" is not zero (.tv_sec == 0, tv_nsec == 0), this is the period at which the following ticks should be generated. The "utmr->it_interval" should be set to zero if only one tick is requested. Setting the "utmr->it_value" to zero will disable the timer, or will create a timerfd without the timer enabled. The function returns the new (or same, in case "ufd" is a valid timerfd descriptor) file, or -1 in case of error. As stated before, the timerfd file descriptor supports poll(2), select(2) and epoll(2). When a timer event happened on the timerfd, a POLLIN mask will be returned. The read(2) call can be used, and it will return a u32 variable holding the number of "ticks" that happened on the interface since the last call to read(2). The read(2) call supportes the O_NONBLOCK flag too, and EAGAIN will be returned if no ticks happened. A quick test program, shows timerfd working correctly on my amd64 box: http://www.xmailserver.org/timerfd-test.c [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_timerfd to sys_ni.c] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:16 -07:00
default y
help
Enable the timerfd() system call that allows to receive timer
events on a file descriptor.
If unsure, say Y.
signal/timer/event: eventfd core This is a very simple and light file descriptor, that can be used as event wait/dispatch by userspace (both wait and dispatch) and by the kernel (dispatch only). It can be used instead of pipe(2) in all cases where those would simply be used to signal events. Their kernel overhead is much lower than pipes, and they do not consume two fds. When used in the kernel, it can offer an fd-bridge to enable, for example, functionalities like KAIO or syslets/threadlets to signal to an fd the completion of certain operations. But more in general, an eventfd can be used by the kernel to signal readiness, in a POSIX poll/select way, of interfaces that would otherwise be incompatible with it. The API is: int eventfd(unsigned int count); The eventfd API accepts an initial "count" parameter, and returns an eventfd fd. It supports poll(2) (POLLIN, POLLOUT, POLLERR), read(2) and write(2). The POLLIN flag is raised when the internal counter is greater than zero. The POLLOUT flag is raised when at least a value of "1" can be written to the internal counter. The POLLERR flag is raised when an overflow in the counter value is detected. The write(2) operation can never overflow the counter, since it blocks (unless O_NONBLOCK is set, in which case -EAGAIN is returned). But the eventfd_signal() function can do it, since it's supposed to not sleep during its operation. The read(2) function reads the __u64 counter value, and reset the internal value to zero. If the value read is equal to (__u64) -1, an overflow happened on the internal counter (due to 2^64 eventfd_signal() posts that has never been retired - unlickely, but possible). The write(2) call writes an __u64 count value, and adds it to the current counter. The eventfd fd supports O_NONBLOCK also. On the kernel side, we have: struct file *eventfd_fget(int fd); int eventfd_signal(struct file *file, unsigned int n); The eventfd_fget() should be called to get a struct file* from an eventfd fd (this is an fget() + check of f_op being an eventfd fops pointer). The kernel can then call eventfd_signal() every time it wants to post an event to userspace. The eventfd_signal() function can be called from any context. An eventfd() simple test and bench is available here: http://www.xmailserver.org/eventfd-bench.c This is the eventfd-based version of pipetest-4 (pipe(2) based): http://www.xmailserver.org/pipetest-4.c Not that performance matters much in the eventfd case, but eventfd-bench shows almost as double as performance than pipetest-4. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix i386 build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_eventfd to sys_ni.c] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:19 -07:00
config EVENTFD
bool "Enable eventfd() system call" if EMBEDDED
select ANON_INODES
signal/timer/event: eventfd core This is a very simple and light file descriptor, that can be used as event wait/dispatch by userspace (both wait and dispatch) and by the kernel (dispatch only). It can be used instead of pipe(2) in all cases where those would simply be used to signal events. Their kernel overhead is much lower than pipes, and they do not consume two fds. When used in the kernel, it can offer an fd-bridge to enable, for example, functionalities like KAIO or syslets/threadlets to signal to an fd the completion of certain operations. But more in general, an eventfd can be used by the kernel to signal readiness, in a POSIX poll/select way, of interfaces that would otherwise be incompatible with it. The API is: int eventfd(unsigned int count); The eventfd API accepts an initial "count" parameter, and returns an eventfd fd. It supports poll(2) (POLLIN, POLLOUT, POLLERR), read(2) and write(2). The POLLIN flag is raised when the internal counter is greater than zero. The POLLOUT flag is raised when at least a value of "1" can be written to the internal counter. The POLLERR flag is raised when an overflow in the counter value is detected. The write(2) operation can never overflow the counter, since it blocks (unless O_NONBLOCK is set, in which case -EAGAIN is returned). But the eventfd_signal() function can do it, since it's supposed to not sleep during its operation. The read(2) function reads the __u64 counter value, and reset the internal value to zero. If the value read is equal to (__u64) -1, an overflow happened on the internal counter (due to 2^64 eventfd_signal() posts that has never been retired - unlickely, but possible). The write(2) call writes an __u64 count value, and adds it to the current counter. The eventfd fd supports O_NONBLOCK also. On the kernel side, we have: struct file *eventfd_fget(int fd); int eventfd_signal(struct file *file, unsigned int n); The eventfd_fget() should be called to get a struct file* from an eventfd fd (this is an fget() + check of f_op being an eventfd fops pointer). The kernel can then call eventfd_signal() every time it wants to post an event to userspace. The eventfd_signal() function can be called from any context. An eventfd() simple test and bench is available here: http://www.xmailserver.org/eventfd-bench.c This is the eventfd-based version of pipetest-4 (pipe(2) based): http://www.xmailserver.org/pipetest-4.c Not that performance matters much in the eventfd case, but eventfd-bench shows almost as double as performance than pipetest-4. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix i386 build] [akpm@linux-foundation.org: add sys_eventfd to sys_ni.c] Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-10 22:23:19 -07:00
default y
help
Enable the eventfd() system call that allows to receive both
kernel notification (ie. KAIO) or userspace notifications.
If unsure, say Y.
config SHMEM
bool "Use full shmem filesystem" if EMBEDDED
default y
depends on MMU
help
The shmem is an internal filesystem used to manage shared memory.
It is backed by swap and manages resource limits. It is also exported
to userspace as tmpfs if TMPFS is enabled. Disabling this
option replaces shmem and tmpfs with the much simpler ramfs code,
which may be appropriate on small systems without swap.
[PATCH] Light weight event counters The remaining counters in page_state after the zoned VM counter patches have been applied are all just for show in /proc/vmstat. They have no essential function for the VM. We use a simple increment of per cpu variables. In order to avoid the most severe races we disable preempt. Preempt does not prevent the race between an increment and an interrupt handler incrementing the same statistics counter. However, that race is exceedingly rare, we may only loose one increment or so and there is no requirement (at least not in kernel) that the vm event counters have to be accurate. In the non preempt case this results in a simple increment for each counter. For many architectures this will be reduced by the compiler to a single instruction. This single instruction is atomic for i386 and x86_64. And therefore even the rare race condition in an interrupt is avoided for both architectures in most cases. The patchset also adds an off switch for embedded systems that allows a building of linux kernels without these counters. The implementation of these counters is through inline code that hopefully results in only a single instruction increment instruction being emitted (i386, x86_64) or in the increment being hidden though instruction concurrency (EPIC architectures such as ia64 can get that done). Benefits: - VM event counter operations usually reduce to a single inline instruction on i386 and x86_64. - No interrupt disable, only preempt disable for the preempt case. Preempt disable can also be avoided by moving the counter into a spinlock. - Handling is similar to zoned VM counters. - Simple and easily extendable. - Can be omitted to reduce memory use for embedded use. References: RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113512330605497&w=2 RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114988082814934&w=2 local_t http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114991748606690&w=2 V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=115014808400007&r=1&w=2 V3 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115024767022346&w=2 V4 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115047968808926&w=2 Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 01:55:45 -07:00
config VM_EVENT_COUNTERS
default y
bool "Enable VM event counters for /proc/vmstat" if EMBEDDED
help
VM event counters are needed for event counts to be shown.
This option allows the disabling of the VM event counters
on EMBEDDED systems. /proc/vmstat will only show page counts
if VM event counters are disabled.
[PATCH] Light weight event counters The remaining counters in page_state after the zoned VM counter patches have been applied are all just for show in /proc/vmstat. They have no essential function for the VM. We use a simple increment of per cpu variables. In order to avoid the most severe races we disable preempt. Preempt does not prevent the race between an increment and an interrupt handler incrementing the same statistics counter. However, that race is exceedingly rare, we may only loose one increment or so and there is no requirement (at least not in kernel) that the vm event counters have to be accurate. In the non preempt case this results in a simple increment for each counter. For many architectures this will be reduced by the compiler to a single instruction. This single instruction is atomic for i386 and x86_64. And therefore even the rare race condition in an interrupt is avoided for both architectures in most cases. The patchset also adds an off switch for embedded systems that allows a building of linux kernels without these counters. The implementation of these counters is through inline code that hopefully results in only a single instruction increment instruction being emitted (i386, x86_64) or in the increment being hidden though instruction concurrency (EPIC architectures such as ia64 can get that done). Benefits: - VM event counter operations usually reduce to a single inline instruction on i386 and x86_64. - No interrupt disable, only preempt disable for the preempt case. Preempt disable can also be avoided by moving the counter into a spinlock. - Handling is similar to zoned VM counters. - Simple and easily extendable. - Can be omitted to reduce memory use for embedded use. References: RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113512330605497&w=2 RFC http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114988082814934&w=2 local_t http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=114991748606690&w=2 V2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=115014808400007&r=1&w=2 V3 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115024767022346&w=2 V4 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=115047968808926&w=2 Signed-off-by: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2006-06-30 01:55:45 -07:00
config SLUB_DEBUG
default y
bool "Enable SLUB debugging support" if EMBEDDED
depends on SLUB
help
SLUB has extensive debug support features. Disabling these can
result in significant savings in code size. This also disables
SLUB sysfs support. /sys/slab will not exist and there will be
no support for cache validation etc.
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
choice
prompt "Choose SLAB allocator"
default SLUB
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
help
This option allows to select a slab allocator.
config SLAB
bool "SLAB"
help
The regular slab allocator that is established and known to work
well in all environments. It organizes cache hot objects in
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
per cpu and per node queues. SLAB is the default choice for
a slab allocator.
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
config SLUB
bool "SLUB (Unqueued Allocator)"
help
SLUB is a slab allocator that minimizes cache line usage
instead of managing queues of cached objects (SLAB approach).
Per cpu caching is realized using slabs of objects instead
of queues of objects. SLUB can use memory efficiently
and has enhanced diagnostics.
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
config SLOB
depends on EMBEDDED
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
bool "SLOB (Simple Allocator)"
help
SLOB replaces the SLAB allocator with a drastically simpler
allocator. SLOB is more space efficient than SLAB but does not
scale well (single lock for all operations) and is also highly
susceptible to fragmentation. SLUB can accomplish a higher object
density. It is usually better to use SLUB instead of SLOB.
SLUB core 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: Christoph Lameter <clameter@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2007-05-06 14:49:36 -07:00
endchoice
endmenu # General setup
config SLABINFO
bool
depends on PROC_FS
depends on SLAB || SLUB
default y
config RT_MUTEXES
boolean
select PLIST
config TINY_SHMEM
default !SHMEM
bool
config BASE_SMALL
int
default 0 if BASE_FULL
default 1 if !BASE_FULL
menuconfig MODULES
bool "Enable loadable module support"
help
Kernel modules are small pieces of compiled code which can
be inserted in the running kernel, rather than being
permanently built into the kernel. You use the "modprobe"
tool to add (and sometimes remove) them. If you say Y here,
many parts of the kernel can be built as modules (by
answering M instead of Y where indicated): this is most
useful for infrequently used options which are not required
for booting. For more information, see the man pages for
modprobe, lsmod, modinfo, insmod and rmmod.
If you say Y here, you will need to run "make
modules_install" to put the modules under /lib/modules/
where modprobe can find them (you may need to be root to do
this).
If unsure, say Y.
config MODULE_UNLOAD
bool "Module unloading"
depends on MODULES
help
Without this option you will not be able to unload any
modules (note that some modules may not be unloadable
anyway), which makes your kernel slightly smaller and
simpler. If unsure, say Y.
config MODULE_FORCE_UNLOAD
bool "Forced module unloading"
depends on MODULE_UNLOAD && EXPERIMENTAL
help
This option allows you to force a module to unload, even if the
kernel believes it is unsafe: the kernel will remove the module
without waiting for anyone to stop using it (using the -f option to
rmmod). This is mainly for kernel developers and desperate users.
If unsure, say N.
config MODVERSIONS
bool "Module versioning support"
depends on MODULES
help
Usually, you have to use modules compiled with your kernel.
Saying Y here makes it sometimes possible to use modules
compiled for different kernels, by adding enough information
to the modules to (hopefully) spot any changes which would
make them incompatible with the kernel you are running. If
unsure, say N.
config MODULE_SRCVERSION_ALL
bool "Source checksum for all modules"
depends on MODULES
help
Modules which contain a MODULE_VERSION get an extra "srcversion"
field inserted into their modinfo section, which contains a
sum of the source files which made it. This helps maintainers
see exactly which source was used to build a module (since
others sometimes change the module source without updating
the version). With this option, such a "srcversion" field
will be created for all modules. If unsure, say N.
config KMOD
bool "Automatic kernel module loading"
depends on MODULES
help
Normally when you have selected some parts of the kernel to
be created as kernel modules, you must load them (using the
"modprobe" command) before you can use them. If you say Y
here, some parts of the kernel will be able to load modules
automatically: when a part of the kernel needs a module, it
runs modprobe with the appropriate arguments, thereby
loading the module if it is available. If unsure, say Y.
config STOP_MACHINE
bool
default y
depends on (SMP && MODULE_UNLOAD) || HOTPLUG_CPU
help
Need stop_machine() primitive.
source "block/Kconfig"
config PREEMPT_NOTIFIERS
bool