History log of /linux-master/kernel/module/Makefile
Revision Date Author Comments
# 8660484e 13-Apr-2023 Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>

module: add debugging auto-load duplicate module support

The finit_module() system call can in the worst case use up to more than
twice of a module's size in virtual memory. Duplicate finit_module()
system calls are non fatal, however they unnecessarily strain virtual
memory during bootup and in the worst case can cause a system to fail
to boot. This is only known to currently be an issue on systems with
larger number of CPUs.

To help debug this situation we need to consider the different sources for
finit_module(). Requests from the kernel that rely on module auto-loading,
ie, the kernel's *request_module() API, are one source of calls. Although
modprobe checks to see if a module is already loaded prior to calling
finit_module() there is a small race possible allowing userspace to
trigger multiple modprobe calls racing against modprobe and this not
seeing the module yet loaded.

This adds debugging support to the kernel module auto-loader (*request_module()
calls) to easily detect duplicate module requests. To aid with possible bootup
failure issues incurred by this, it will converge duplicates requests to a
single request. This avoids any possible strain on virtual memory during
bootup which could be incurred by duplicate module autoloading requests.

Folks debugging virtual memory abuse on bootup can and should enable
this to see what pr_warn()s come on, to see if module auto-loading is to
blame for their wores. If they see duplicates they can further debug this
by enabling the module.enable_dups_trace kernel parameter or by enabling
CONFIG_MODULE_DEBUG_AUTOLOAD_DUPS_TRACE.

Current evidence seems to point to only a few duplicates for module
auto-loading. And so the source for other duplicates creating heavy
virtual memory pressure due to larger number of CPUs should becoming
from another place (likely udev).

Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# df3e764d 28-Mar-2023 Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>

module: add debug stats to help identify memory pressure

Loading modules with finit_module() can end up using vmalloc(), vmap()
and vmalloc() again, for a total of up to 3 separate allocations in the
worst case for a single module. We always kernel_read*() the module,
that's a vmalloc(). Then vmap() is used for the module decompression,
and if so the last read buffer is freed as we use the now decompressed
module buffer to stuff data into our copy module. The last allocation is
specific to each architectures but pretty much that's generally a series
of vmalloc() calls or a variation of vmalloc to handle ELF sections with
special permissions.

Evaluation with new stress-ng module support [1] with just 100 ops
is proving that you can end up using GiBs of data easily even with all
care we have in the kernel and userspace today in trying to not load modules
which are already loaded. 100 ops seems to resemble the sort of pressure a
system with about 400 CPUs can create on module loading. Although issues
relating to duplicate module requests due to each CPU inucurring a new
module reuest is silly and some of these are being fixed, we currently lack
proper tooling to help diagnose easily what happened, when it happened
and who likely is to blame -- userspace or kernel module autoloading.

Provide an initial set of stats which use debugfs to let us easily scrape
post-boot information about failed loads. This sort of information can
be used on production worklaods to try to optimize *avoiding* redundant
memory pressure using finit_module().

There's a few examples that can be provided:

A 255 vCPU system without the next patch in this series applied:

Startup finished in 19.143s (kernel) + 7.078s (userspace) = 26.221s
graphical.target reached after 6.988s in userspace

And 13.58 GiB of virtual memory space lost due to failed module loading:

root@big ~ # cat /sys/kernel/debug/modules/stats
Mods ever loaded 67
Mods failed on kread 0
Mods failed on decompress 0
Mods failed on becoming 0
Mods failed on load 1411
Total module size 11464704
Total mod text size 4194304
Failed kread bytes 0
Failed decompress bytes 0
Failed becoming bytes 0
Failed kmod bytes 14588526272
Virtual mem wasted bytes 14588526272
Average mod size 171115
Average mod text size 62602
Average fail load bytes 10339140
Duplicate failed modules:
module-name How-many-times Reason
kvm_intel 249 Load
kvm 249 Load
irqbypass 8 Load
crct10dif_pclmul 128 Load
ghash_clmulni_intel 27 Load
sha512_ssse3 50 Load
sha512_generic 200 Load
aesni_intel 249 Load
crypto_simd 41 Load
cryptd 131 Load
evdev 2 Load
serio_raw 1 Load
virtio_pci 3 Load
nvme 3 Load
nvme_core 3 Load
virtio_pci_legacy_dev 3 Load
virtio_pci_modern_dev 3 Load
t10_pi 3 Load
virtio 3 Load
crc32_pclmul 6 Load
crc64_rocksoft 3 Load
crc32c_intel 40 Load
virtio_ring 3 Load
crc64 3 Load

The following screen shot, of a simple 8vcpu 8 GiB KVM guest with the
next patch in this series applied, shows 226.53 MiB are wasted in virtual
memory allocations which due to duplicate module requests during boot.
It also shows an average module memory size of 167.10 KiB and an an
average module .text + .init.text size of 61.13 KiB. The end shows all
modules which were detected as duplicate requests and whether or not
they failed early after just the first kernel_read*() call or late after
we've already allocated the private space for the module in
layout_and_allocate(). A system with module decompression would reveal
more wasted virtual memory space.

We should put effort now into identifying the source of these duplicate
module requests and trimming these down as much possible. Larger systems
will obviously show much more wasted virtual memory allocations.

root@kmod ~ # cat /sys/kernel/debug/modules/stats
Mods ever loaded 67
Mods failed on kread 0
Mods failed on decompress 0
Mods failed on becoming 83
Mods failed on load 16
Total module size 11464704
Total mod text size 4194304
Failed kread bytes 0
Failed decompress bytes 0
Failed becoming bytes 228959096
Failed kmod bytes 8578080
Virtual mem wasted bytes 237537176
Average mod size 171115
Average mod text size 62602
Avg fail becoming bytes 2758544
Average fail load bytes 536130
Duplicate failed modules:
module-name How-many-times Reason
kvm_intel 7 Becoming
kvm 7 Becoming
irqbypass 6 Becoming & Load
crct10dif_pclmul 7 Becoming & Load
ghash_clmulni_intel 7 Becoming & Load
sha512_ssse3 6 Becoming & Load
sha512_generic 7 Becoming & Load
aesni_intel 7 Becoming
crypto_simd 7 Becoming & Load
cryptd 3 Becoming & Load
evdev 1 Becoming
serio_raw 1 Becoming
nvme 3 Becoming
nvme_core 3 Becoming
t10_pi 3 Becoming
virtio_pci 3 Becoming
crc32_pclmul 6 Becoming & Load
crc64_rocksoft 3 Becoming
crc32c_intel 3 Becoming
virtio_pci_modern_dev 2 Becoming
virtio_pci_legacy_dev 1 Becoming
crc64 2 Becoming
virtio 2 Becoming
virtio_ring 2 Becoming

[0] https://github.com/ColinIanKing/stress-ng.git
[1] echo 0 > /proc/sys/vm/oom_dump_tasks
./stress-ng --module 100 --module-name xfs

Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 25be451a 19-Mar-2023 Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>

module: fold usermode helper kmod into modules directory

The kernel/kmod.c is already only built if we enabled modules, so
just stuff it under kernel/module/kmod.c and unify the MAINTAINERS
file for it.

Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 99bd9956 02-May-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Introduce module unload taint tracking

Currently, only the initial module that tainted the kernel is
recorded e.g. when an out-of-tree module is loaded.

The purpose of this patch is to allow the kernel to maintain a record of
each unloaded module that taints the kernel. So, in addition to
displaying a list of linked modules (see print_modules()) e.g. in the
event of a detected bad page, unloaded modules that carried a taint/or
taints are displayed too. A tainted module unload count is maintained.

The number of tracked modules is not fixed. This feature is disabled by
default.

Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 32a08c17 23-Feb-2022 Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>

module: Move module_enable_x() and frob_text() in strict_rwx.c

Move module_enable_x() together with module_enable_nx() and
module_enable_ro().

Those three functions are going together, they are all used
to set up the correct page flags on the different sections.

As module_enable_x() is used independently of
CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX, build strict_rwx.c all the time and
use IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_STRICT_MODULE_RWX) when relevant.

Signed-off-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 47889798 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move version support into a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates module version support out of core code into
kernel/module/version.c. In addition simple code refactoring to
make this possible.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# f64205a4 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move kdb module related code out of main kdb code

No functional change.

This patch migrates the kdb 'lsmod' command support out of main
kdb code into its own file under kernel/module. In addition to
the above, a minor style warning i.e. missing a blank line after
declarations, was resolved too. The new file was added to
MAINTAINERS. Finally we remove linux/module.h as it is entirely
redundant.

Reviewed-by: Daniel Thompson <daniel.thompson@linaro.org>
Acked-by: Daniel Thompson <daniel.thompson@linaro.org>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 44c09535 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move sysfs support into a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates module sysfs support out of core code into
kernel/module/sysfs.c. In addition simple code refactoring to
make this possible.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 0ffc40f6 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move procfs support into a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates code that allows one to generate a
list of loaded/or linked modules via /proc when procfs
support is enabled into kernel/module/procfs.c.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 91fb02f3 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move kallsyms support into a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates kallsyms code out of core module
code kernel/module/kallsyms.c

Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 473c84d1 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move kmemleak support to a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates kmemleak code out of core module
code into kernel/module/debug_kmemleak.c

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# b33465fe 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move strict rwx support to a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates code that makes module text
and rodata memory read-only and non-text memory
non-executable from core module code into
kernel/module/strict_rwx.c.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 58d208de 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move latched RB-tree support to a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates module latched RB-tree support
(e.g. see __module_address()) from core module code
into kernel/module/tree_lookup.c.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# 1be9473e 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move livepatch support to a separate file

No functional change.

This patch migrates livepatch support (i.e. used during module
add/or load and remove/or deletion) from core module code into
kernel/module/livepatch.c. At the moment it contains code to
persist Elf information about a given livepatch module, only.
The new file was added to MAINTAINERS.

Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Tested-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>


# cfc1d277 22-Mar-2022 Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>

module: Move all into module/

No functional changes.

This patch moves all module related code into a separate directory,
modifies each file name and creates a new Makefile. Note: this effort
is in preparation to refactor core module code.

Reviewed-by: Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>
Signed-off-by: Aaron Tomlin <atomlin@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>