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Mel Gorman e832bf48c8 audit: Reduce overhead using a coarse clock
Commit 2115bb250f ("audit: Use timespec64 to represent audit timestamps")
noted that audit timestamps were not y2038 safe and used a 64-bit
timestamp. In itself, this makes sense but the conversion was from
CURRENT_TIME to ktime_get_real_ts64() which is a heavier call to record
an accurate timestamp which is required in some, but not all, cases. The
impact is that when auditd is running without any rules that all syscalls
have higher overhead. This is visible in the sysbench-thread benchmark as
a 11.5% performance hit. That benchmark is dumb as rocks but it's also
visible in redis as an 8-10% hit on all operations which is of greater
concern. It is somewhat stupid of audit to track syscalls without any
rules related to syscalls but that is how it behaves.

The overhead can be directly measured with perf comparing 4.9 with 4.12

4.9
     7.76%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __schedule
     7.62%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] _raw_spin_lock
     7.37%  sysbench         libpthread-2.22.so  [.] __lll_lock_elision
     7.29%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [.] syscall_return_via_sysret
     6.59%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] native_sched_clock
     5.21%  sysbench         libc-2.22.so        [.] __sched_yield
     4.38%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] entry_SYSCALL_64
     4.28%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] do_syscall_64
     3.49%  sysbench         libpthread-2.22.so  [.] __lll_unlock_elision
     3.13%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __audit_syscall_exit
     2.87%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] update_curr
     2.73%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] pick_next_task_fair
     2.31%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] syscall_trace_enter
     2.20%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __audit_syscall_entry
.....
     0.00%  swapper          [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] read_tsc

4.12
     7.84%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __schedule
     7.05%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] _raw_spin_lock
     6.57%  sysbench         libpthread-2.22.so  [.] __lll_lock_elision
     6.50%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [.] syscall_return_via_sysret
     5.95%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] read_tsc
     5.71%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] native_sched_clock
     4.78%  sysbench         libc-2.22.so        [.] __sched_yield
     4.30%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] entry_SYSCALL_64
     3.94%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] do_syscall_64
     3.37%  sysbench         libpthread-2.22.so  [.] __lll_unlock_elision
     3.32%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __audit_syscall_exit
     2.91%  sysbench         [kernel.vmlinux]    [k] __getnstimeofday64

Note the additional overhead from read_tsc which goes from 0% to 5.95%.
This is on a single-socket E3-1230 but similar overheads have been measured
on an older machine which the patch also eliminates.

The patch in question has no explanation as to why a fully-accurate timestamp
is required and is likely an oversight.  Using a coarser, but monotically
increasing, timestamp the overhead can be eliminated.  While it can be
worked around by configuring or disabling audit, it's tricky enough to
detect that a kernel fix is justified. With this patch, we see the following;

sysbenchthread
                              4.9.0                 4.12.0                 4.12.0
                            vanilla                vanilla            coarse-v1r1
Amean     1         1.49 (   0.00%)        1.66 ( -11.42%)        1.51 (  -1.34%)
Amean     3         1.48 (   0.00%)        1.65 ( -11.45%)        1.50 (  -0.96%)
Amean     5         1.49 (   0.00%)        1.67 ( -12.31%)        1.51 (  -1.83%)
Amean     7         1.49 (   0.00%)        1.66 ( -11.72%)        1.50 (  -0.67%)
Amean     12        1.48 (   0.00%)        1.65 ( -11.57%)        1.52 (  -2.89%)
Amean     16        1.49 (   0.00%)        1.65 ( -11.13%)        1.51 (  -1.73%)

The benchmark is reporting the time required for different thread counts to
lock/unlock a private mutex which, while dense, demonstrates the syscall
overhead. This is showing that 4.12 took a 11-12% hit but the overhead is
almost eliminated by the patch. While the variance is not reported here,
it's well within the noise with the patch applied.

Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
Acked-by: Deepa Dinamani <deepa.kernel@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Paul Moore <paul@paul-moore.com>
2017-09-05 09:46:54 -04:00
arch Merge branch 'upstream' of git://git.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/ralf/upstream-linus 2017-09-03 09:50:26 -07:00
block blk-mq-debugfs: Add names for recently added flags 2017-08-25 08:07:44 -06:00
certs modsign: add markers to endif-statements in certs/Makefile 2017-07-14 11:01:37 +10:00
crypto crypto: algif_skcipher - only call put_page on referenced and used pages 2017-08-22 14:45:48 +08:00
Documentation ARM: SoC fixes for 4.13 2017-09-01 17:16:40 -07:00
drivers Merge branch 'upstream' of git://git.linux-mips.org/pub/scm/ralf/upstream-linus 2017-09-03 09:50:26 -07:00
firmware firmware/Makefile: force recompilation if makefile changes 2017-05-08 17:15:10 -07:00
fs Merge branch 'for-next' of git://git.samba.org/sfrench/cifs-2.6 2017-09-01 20:57:27 -07:00
include Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-09-03 09:23:23 -07:00
init random: do not ignore early device randomness 2017-07-12 16:26:00 -07:00
ipc ipc: add missing container_of()s for randstruct 2017-08-02 17:16:12 -07:00
kernel audit: Reduce overhead using a coarse clock 2017-09-05 09:46:54 -04:00
lib Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2017-09-01 10:30:03 -07:00
mm Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2017-08-31 17:56:56 -07:00
net Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2017-09-01 12:49:03 -07:00
samples samples/bpf: fix bpf tunnel cleanup 2017-07-31 22:02:47 -07:00
scripts scripts/dtc: fix '%zx' warning 2017-08-31 16:33:15 -07:00
security Now that IPC and other changes have landed, enable manual markings for 2017-07-19 08:55:18 -07:00
sound ASoC: Fixes for v4.13 2017-08-31 14:08:26 +02:00
tools NTB bug fixes to address an incorrect ntb_mw_count reference in the NTB 2017-08-27 17:01:54 -07:00
usr ramfs: clarify help text that compression applies to ramfs as well as legacy ramdisk. 2017-07-06 16:24:30 -07:00
virt KVM: update to new mmu_notifier semantic v2 2017-08-31 16:13:00 -07:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Add hch to .get_maintainer.ignore 2015-08-21 14:30:10 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore kbuild: Add support to generate LLVM assembly files 2017-04-25 08:13:52 +09:00
.mailmap power supply and reset changes for the v4.12 series (part 2) 2017-05-12 12:02:21 -07:00
COPYING
CREDITS avr32: remove support for AVR32 architecture 2017-05-01 09:27:15 +02:00
Kbuild kbuild: Consolidate header generation from ASM offset information 2017-04-13 05:43:37 +09:00
Kconfig
MAINTAINERS Merge branch 'irq-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2017-08-20 09:07:56 -07:00
Makefile Linux 4.13 2017-09-03 13:56:17 -07:00
README README: add a new README file, pointing to the Documentation/ 2016-10-24 08:12:35 -02:00

Linux kernel
============

This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst

Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users.
These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.