The summary of the changes for this pull requests is:
* Song Liu's new struct module_memory replacement
* Nick Alcock's MODULE_LICENSE() removal for non-modules
* My cleanups and enhancements to reduce the areas where we vmalloc
module memory for duplicates, and the respective debug code which
proves the remaining vmalloc pressure comes from userspace.
Most of the changes have been in linux-next for quite some time except
the minor fixes I made to check if a module was already loaded
prior to allocating the final module memory with vmalloc and the
respective debug code it introduces to help clarify the issue. Although
the functional change is small it is rather safe as it can only *help*
reduce vmalloc space for duplicates and is confirmed to fix a bootup
issue with over 400 CPUs with KASAN enabled. I don't expect stable
kernels to pick up that fix as the cleanups would have also had to have
been picked up. Folks on larger CPU systems with modules will want to
just upgrade if vmalloc space has been an issue on bootup.
Given the size of this request, here's some more elaborate details
on this pull request.
The functional change change in this pull request is the very first
patch from Song Liu which replaces the struct module_layout with a new
struct module memory. The old data structure tried to put together all
types of supported module memory types in one data structure, the new
one abstracts the differences in memory types in a module to allow each
one to provide their own set of details. This paves the way in the
future so we can deal with them in a cleaner way. If you look at changes
they also provide a nice cleanup of how we handle these different memory
areas in a module. This change has been in linux-next since before the
merge window opened for v6.3 so to provide more than a full kernel cycle
of testing. It's a good thing as quite a bit of fixes have been found
for it.
Jason Baron then made dynamic debug a first class citizen module user by
using module notifier callbacks to allocate / remove module specific
dynamic debug information.
Nick Alcock has done quite a bit of work cross-tree to remove module
license tags from things which cannot possibly be module at my request
so to:
a) help him with his longer term tooling goals which require a
deterministic evaluation if a piece a symbol code could ever be
part of a module or not. But quite recently it is has been made
clear that tooling is not the only one that would benefit.
Disambiguating symbols also helps efforts such as live patching,
kprobes and BPF, but for other reasons and R&D on this area
is active with no clear solution in sight.
b) help us inch closer to the now generally accepted long term goal
of automating all the MODULE_LICENSE() tags from SPDX license tags
In so far as a) is concerned, although module license tags are a no-op
for non-modules, tools which would want create a mapping of possible
modules can only rely on the module license tag after the commit
8b41fc4454 ("kbuild: create modules.builtin without Makefile.modbuiltin
or tristate.conf"). Nick has been working on this *for years* and
AFAICT I was the only one to suggest two alternatives to this approach
for tooling. The complexity in one of my suggested approaches lies in
that we'd need a possible-obj-m and a could-be-module which would check
if the object being built is part of any kconfig build which could ever
lead to it being part of a module, and if so define a new define
-DPOSSIBLE_MODULE [0]. A more obvious yet theoretical approach I've
suggested would be to have a tristate in kconfig imply the same new
-DPOSSIBLE_MODULE as well but that means getting kconfig symbol names
mapping to modules always, and I don't think that's the case today. I am
not aware of Nick or anyone exploring either of these options. Quite
recently Josh Poimboeuf has pointed out that live patching, kprobes and
BPF would benefit from resolving some part of the disambiguation as
well but for other reasons. The function granularity KASLR (fgkaslr)
patches were mentioned but Joe Lawrence has clarified this effort has
been dropped with no clear solution in sight [1].
In the meantime removing module license tags from code which could never
be modules is welcomed for both objectives mentioned above. Some
developers have also welcomed these changes as it has helped clarify
when a module was never possible and they forgot to clean this up,
and so you'll see quite a bit of Nick's patches in other pull
requests for this merge window. I just picked up the stragglers after
rc3. LWN has good coverage on the motivation behind this work [2] and
the typical cross-tree issues he ran into along the way. The only
concrete blocker issue he ran into was that we should not remove the
MODULE_LICENSE() tags from files which have no SPDX tags yet, even if
they can never be modules. Nick ended up giving up on his efforts due
to having to do this vetting and backlash he ran into from folks who
really did *not understand* the core of the issue nor were providing
any alternative / guidance. I've gone through his changes and dropped
the patches which dropped the module license tags where an SPDX
license tag was missing, it only consisted of 11 drivers. To see
if a pull request deals with a file which lacks SPDX tags you
can just use:
./scripts/spdxcheck.py -f \
$(git diff --name-only commid-id | xargs echo)
You'll see a core module file in this pull request for the above,
but that's not related to his changes. WE just need to add the SPDX
license tag for the kernel/module/kmod.c file in the future but
it demonstrates the effectiveness of the script.
Most of Nick's changes were spread out through different trees,
and I just picked up the slack after rc3 for the last kernel was out.
Those changes have been in linux-next for over two weeks.
The cleanups, debug code I added and final fix I added for modules
were motivated by David Hildenbrand's report of boot failing on
a systems with over 400 CPUs when KASAN was enabled due to running
out of virtual memory space. Although the functional change only
consists of 3 lines in the patch "module: avoid allocation if module is
already present and ready", proving that this was the best we can
do on the modules side took quite a bit of effort and new debug code.
The initial cleanups I did on the modules side of things has been
in linux-next since around rc3 of the last kernel, the actual final
fix for and debug code however have only been in linux-next for about a
week or so but I think it is worth getting that code in for this merge
window as it does help fix / prove / evaluate the issues reported
with larger number of CPUs. Userspace is not yet fixed as it is taking
a bit of time for folks to understand the crux of the issue and find a
proper resolution. Worst come to worst, I have a kludge-of-concept [3]
of how to make kernel_read*() calls for modules unique / converge them,
but I'm currently inclined to just see if userspace can fix this
instead.
[0] https://lore.kernel.org/all/Y/kXDqW+7d71C4wz@bombadil.infradead.org/
[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/025f2151-ce7c-5630-9b90-98742c97ac65@redhat.com
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/927569/
[3] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230414052840.1994456-3-mcgrof@kernel.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----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=56WK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Merge tag 'modules-6.4-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/linux
Pull module updates from Luis Chamberlain:
"The summary of the changes for this pull requests is:
- Song Liu's new struct module_memory replacement
- Nick Alcock's MODULE_LICENSE() removal for non-modules
- My cleanups and enhancements to reduce the areas where we vmalloc
module memory for duplicates, and the respective debug code which
proves the remaining vmalloc pressure comes from userspace.
Most of the changes have been in linux-next for quite some time except
the minor fixes I made to check if a module was already loaded prior
to allocating the final module memory with vmalloc and the respective
debug code it introduces to help clarify the issue. Although the
functional change is small it is rather safe as it can only *help*
reduce vmalloc space for duplicates and is confirmed to fix a bootup
issue with over 400 CPUs with KASAN enabled. I don't expect stable
kernels to pick up that fix as the cleanups would have also had to
have been picked up. Folks on larger CPU systems with modules will
want to just upgrade if vmalloc space has been an issue on bootup.
Given the size of this request, here's some more elaborate details:
The functional change change in this pull request is the very first
patch from Song Liu which replaces the 'struct module_layout' with a
new 'struct module_memory'. The old data structure tried to put
together all types of supported module memory types in one data
structure, the new one abstracts the differences in memory types in a
module to allow each one to provide their own set of details. This
paves the way in the future so we can deal with them in a cleaner way.
If you look at changes they also provide a nice cleanup of how we
handle these different memory areas in a module. This change has been
in linux-next since before the merge window opened for v6.3 so to
provide more than a full kernel cycle of testing. It's a good thing as
quite a bit of fixes have been found for it.
Jason Baron then made dynamic debug a first class citizen module user
by using module notifier callbacks to allocate / remove module
specific dynamic debug information.
Nick Alcock has done quite a bit of work cross-tree to remove module
license tags from things which cannot possibly be module at my request
so to:
a) help him with his longer term tooling goals which require a
deterministic evaluation if a piece a symbol code could ever be
part of a module or not. But quite recently it is has been made
clear that tooling is not the only one that would benefit.
Disambiguating symbols also helps efforts such as live patching,
kprobes and BPF, but for other reasons and R&D on this area is
active with no clear solution in sight.
b) help us inch closer to the now generally accepted long term goal
of automating all the MODULE_LICENSE() tags from SPDX license tags
In so far as a) is concerned, although module license tags are a no-op
for non-modules, tools which would want create a mapping of possible
modules can only rely on the module license tag after the commit
8b41fc4454 ("kbuild: create modules.builtin without
Makefile.modbuiltin or tristate.conf").
Nick has been working on this *for years* and AFAICT I was the only
one to suggest two alternatives to this approach for tooling. The
complexity in one of my suggested approaches lies in that we'd need a
possible-obj-m and a could-be-module which would check if the object
being built is part of any kconfig build which could ever lead to it
being part of a module, and if so define a new define
-DPOSSIBLE_MODULE [0].
A more obvious yet theoretical approach I've suggested would be to
have a tristate in kconfig imply the same new -DPOSSIBLE_MODULE as
well but that means getting kconfig symbol names mapping to modules
always, and I don't think that's the case today. I am not aware of
Nick or anyone exploring either of these options. Quite recently Josh
Poimboeuf has pointed out that live patching, kprobes and BPF would
benefit from resolving some part of the disambiguation as well but for
other reasons. The function granularity KASLR (fgkaslr) patches were
mentioned but Joe Lawrence has clarified this effort has been dropped
with no clear solution in sight [1].
In the meantime removing module license tags from code which could
never be modules is welcomed for both objectives mentioned above. Some
developers have also welcomed these changes as it has helped clarify
when a module was never possible and they forgot to clean this up, and
so you'll see quite a bit of Nick's patches in other pull requests for
this merge window. I just picked up the stragglers after rc3. LWN has
good coverage on the motivation behind this work [2] and the typical
cross-tree issues he ran into along the way. The only concrete blocker
issue he ran into was that we should not remove the MODULE_LICENSE()
tags from files which have no SPDX tags yet, even if they can never be
modules. Nick ended up giving up on his efforts due to having to do
this vetting and backlash he ran into from folks who really did *not
understand* the core of the issue nor were providing any alternative /
guidance. I've gone through his changes and dropped the patches which
dropped the module license tags where an SPDX license tag was missing,
it only consisted of 11 drivers. To see if a pull request deals with a
file which lacks SPDX tags you can just use:
./scripts/spdxcheck.py -f \
$(git diff --name-only commid-id | xargs echo)
You'll see a core module file in this pull request for the above, but
that's not related to his changes. WE just need to add the SPDX
license tag for the kernel/module/kmod.c file in the future but it
demonstrates the effectiveness of the script.
Most of Nick's changes were spread out through different trees, and I
just picked up the slack after rc3 for the last kernel was out. Those
changes have been in linux-next for over two weeks.
The cleanups, debug code I added and final fix I added for modules
were motivated by David Hildenbrand's report of boot failing on a
systems with over 400 CPUs when KASAN was enabled due to running out
of virtual memory space. Although the functional change only consists
of 3 lines in the patch "module: avoid allocation if module is already
present and ready", proving that this was the best we can do on the
modules side took quite a bit of effort and new debug code.
The initial cleanups I did on the modules side of things has been in
linux-next since around rc3 of the last kernel, the actual final fix
for and debug code however have only been in linux-next for about a
week or so but I think it is worth getting that code in for this merge
window as it does help fix / prove / evaluate the issues reported with
larger number of CPUs. Userspace is not yet fixed as it is taking a
bit of time for folks to understand the crux of the issue and find a
proper resolution. Worst come to worst, I have a kludge-of-concept [3]
of how to make kernel_read*() calls for modules unique / converge
them, but I'm currently inclined to just see if userspace can fix this
instead"
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/Y/kXDqW+7d71C4wz@bombadil.infradead.org/ [0]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/025f2151-ce7c-5630-9b90-98742c97ac65@redhat.com [1]
Link: https://lwn.net/Articles/927569/ [2]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230414052840.1994456-3-mcgrof@kernel.org [3]
* tag 'modules-6.4-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/linux: (121 commits)
module: add debugging auto-load duplicate module support
module: stats: fix invalid_mod_bytes typo
module: remove use of uninitialized variable len
module: fix building stats for 32-bit targets
module: stats: include uapi/linux/module.h
module: avoid allocation if module is already present and ready
module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure
module: extract patient module check into helper
modules/kmod: replace implementation with a semaphore
Change DEFINE_SEMAPHORE() to take a number argument
module: fix kmemleak annotations for non init ELF sections
module: Ignore L0 and rename is_arm_mapping_symbol()
module: Move is_arm_mapping_symbol() to module_symbol.h
module: Sync code of is_arm_mapping_symbol()
scripts/gdb: use mem instead of core_layout to get the module address
interconnect: remove module-related code
interconnect: remove MODULE_LICENSE in non-modules
zswap: remove MODULE_LICENSE in non-modules
zpool: remove MODULE_LICENSE in non-modules
x86/mm/dump_pagetables: remove MODULE_LICENSE in non-modules
...
b6a7828502