TWx Linux Repository
2dd73a4f09
Problem: The introduction of separate run queues per CPU has brought with it "nice" enforcement problems that are best described by a simple example. For the sake of argument suppose that on a single CPU machine with a nice==19 hard spinner and a nice==0 hard spinner running that the nice==0 task gets 95% of the CPU and the nice==19 task gets 5% of the CPU. Now suppose that there is a system with 2 CPUs and 2 nice==19 hard spinners and 2 nice==0 hard spinners running. The user of this system would be entitled to expect that the nice==0 tasks each get 95% of a CPU and the nice==19 tasks only get 5% each. However, whether this expectation is met is pretty much down to luck as there are four equally likely distributions of the tasks to the CPUs that the load balancing code will consider to be balanced with loads of 2.0 for each CPU. Two of these distributions involve one nice==0 and one nice==19 task per CPU and in these circumstances the users expectations will be met. The other two distributions both involve both nice==0 tasks being on one CPU and both nice==19 being on the other CPU and each task will get 50% of a CPU and the user's expectations will not be met. Solution: The solution to this problem that is implemented in the attached patch is to use weighted loads when determining if the system is balanced and, when an imbalance is detected, to move an amount of weighted load between run queues (as opposed to a number of tasks) to restore the balance. Once again, the easiest way to explain why both of these measures are necessary is to use a simple example. Suppose that (in a slight variation of the above example) that we have a two CPU system with 4 nice==0 and 4 nice=19 hard spinning tasks running and that the 4 nice==0 tasks are on one CPU and the 4 nice==19 tasks are on the other CPU. The weighted loads for the two CPUs would be 4.0 and 0.2 respectively and the load balancing code would move 2 tasks resulting in one CPU with a load of 2.0 and the other with load of 2.2. If this was considered to be a big enough imbalance to justify moving a task and that task was moved using the current move_tasks() then it would move the highest priority task that it found and this would result in one CPU with a load of 3.0 and the other with a load of 1.2 which would result in the movement of a task in the opposite direction and so on -- infinite loop. If, on the other hand, an amount of load to be moved is calculated from the imbalance (in this case 0.1) and move_tasks() skips tasks until it find ones whose contributions to the weighted load are less than this amount it would move two of the nice==19 tasks resulting in a system with 2 nice==0 and 2 nice=19 on each CPU with loads of 2.1 for each CPU. One of the advantages of this mechanism is that on a system where all tasks have nice==0 the load balancing calculations would be mathematically identical to the current load balancing code. Notes: struct task_struct: has a new field load_weight which (in a trade off of space for speed) stores the contribution that this task makes to a CPU's weighted load when it is runnable. struct runqueue: has a new field raw_weighted_load which is the sum of the load_weight values for the currently runnable tasks on this run queue. This field always needs to be updated when nr_running is updated so two new inline functions inc_nr_running() and dec_nr_running() have been created to make sure that this happens. This also offers a convenient way to optimize away this part of the smpnice mechanism when CONFIG_SMP is not defined. int try_to_wake_up(): in this function the value SCHED_LOAD_BALANCE is used to represent the load contribution of a single task in various calculations in the code that decides which CPU to put the waking task on. While this would be a valid on a system where the nice values for the runnable tasks were distributed evenly around zero it will lead to anomalous load balancing if the distribution is skewed in either direction. To overcome this problem SCHED_LOAD_SCALE has been replaced by the load_weight for the relevant task or by the average load_weight per task for the queue in question (as appropriate). int move_tasks(): The modifications to this function were complicated by the fact that active_load_balance() uses it to move exactly one task without checking whether an imbalance actually exists. This precluded the simple overloading of max_nr_move with max_load_move and necessitated the addition of the latter as an extra argument to the function. The internal implementation is then modified to move up to max_nr_move tasks and max_load_move of weighted load. This slightly complicates the code where move_tasks() is called and if ever active_load_balance() is changed to not use move_tasks() the implementation of move_tasks() should be simplified accordingly. struct sched_group *find_busiest_group(): Similar to try_to_wake_up(), there are places in this function where SCHED_LOAD_SCALE is used to represent the load contribution of a single task and the same issues are created. A similar solution is adopted except that it is now the average per task contribution to a group's load (as opposed to a run queue) that is required. As this value is not directly available from the group it is calculated on the fly as the queues in the groups are visited when determining the busiest group. A key change to this function is that it is no longer to scale down *imbalance on exit as move_tasks() uses the load in its scaled form. void set_user_nice(): has been modified to update the task's load_weight field when it's nice value and also to ensure that its run queue's raw_weighted_load field is updated if it was runnable. From: "Siddha, Suresh B" <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com> With smpnice, sched groups with highest priority tasks can mask the imbalance between the other sched groups with in the same domain. This patch fixes some of the listed down scenarios by not considering the sched groups which are lightly loaded. a) on a simple 4-way MP system, if we have one high priority and 4 normal priority tasks, with smpnice we would like to see the high priority task scheduled on one cpu, two other cpus getting one normal task each and the fourth cpu getting the remaining two normal tasks. but with current smpnice extra normal priority task keeps jumping from one cpu to another cpu having the normal priority task. This is because of the busiest_has_loaded_cpus, nr_loaded_cpus logic.. We are not including the cpu with high priority task in max_load calculations but including that in total and avg_load calcuations.. leading to max_load < avg_load and load balance between cpus running normal priority tasks(2 Vs 1) will always show imbalanace as one normal priority and the extra normal priority task will keep moving from one cpu to another cpu having normal priority task.. b) 4-way system with HT (8 logical processors). Package-P0 T0 has a highest priority task, T1 is idle. Package-P1 Both T0 and T1 have 1 normal priority task each.. P2 and P3 are idle. With this patch, one of the normal priority tasks on P1 will be moved to P2 or P3.. c) With the current weighted smp nice calculations, it doesn't always make sense to look at the highest weighted runqueue in the busy group.. Consider a load balance scenario on a DP with HT system, with Package-0 containing one high priority and one low priority, Package-1 containing one low priority(with other thread being idle).. Package-1 thinks that it need to take the low priority thread from Package-0. And find_busiest_queue() returns the cpu thread with highest priority task.. And ultimately(with help of active load balance) we move high priority task to Package-1. And same continues with Package-0 now, moving high priority task from package-1 to package-0.. Even without the presence of active load balance, load balance will fail to balance the above scenario.. Fix find_busiest_queue to use "imbalance" when it is lightly loaded. [kernel@kolivas.org: sched: store weighted load on up] [kernel@kolivas.org: sched: add discrete weighted cpu load function] [suresh.b.siddha@intel.com: sched: remove dead code] Signed-off-by: Peter Williams <pwil3058@bigpond.com.au> Cc: "Siddha, Suresh B" <suresh.b.siddha@intel.com> Cc: "Chen, Kenneth W" <kenneth.w.chen@intel.com> Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Cc: Nick Piggin <nickpiggin@yahoo.com.au> Signed-off-by: Con Kolivas <kernel@kolivas.org> Cc: John Hawkes <hawkes@sgi.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> |
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| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
| REPORTING-BUGS | ||
Linux kernel release 2.6.xx <http://kernel.org>
These are the release notes for Linux version 2.6. Read them carefully,
as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong.
WHAT IS LINUX?
Linux is a clone of the operating system Unix, written from scratch by
Linus Torvalds with assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across
the Net. It aims towards POSIX and Single UNIX Specification compliance.
It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged Unix,
including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries, demand
loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory management,
and multistack networking including IPv4 and IPv6.
It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
accompanying COPYING file for more details.
ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN?
Although originally developed first for 32-bit x86-based PCs (386 or higher),
today Linux also runs on (at least) the Compaq Alpha AXP, Sun SPARC and
UltraSPARC, Motorola 68000, PowerPC, PowerPC64, ARM, Hitachi SuperH,
IBM S/390, MIPS, HP PA-RISC, Intel IA-64, DEC VAX, AMD x86-64, AXIS CRIS,
and Renesas M32R architectures.
Linux is easily portable to most general-purpose 32- or 64-bit architectures
as long as they have a paged memory management unit (PMMU) and a port of the
GNU C compiler (gcc) (part of The GNU Compiler Collection, GCC). Linux has
also been ported to a number of architectures without a PMMU, although
functionality is then obviously somewhat limited.
DOCUMENTATION:
- There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
general UNIX questions. I'd recommend looking into the documentation
subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
Project) books. This README is not meant to be documentation on the
system: there are much better sources available.
- There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some
drivers for example. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what
is contained in each file. Please read the Changes file, as it
contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
your kernel.
- The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for
kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a
number of formats: PostScript (.ps), PDF, and HTML, among others.
After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", or "make htmldocs"
will render the documentation in the requested format.
INSTALLING the kernel:
- If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and
unpack it:
gzip -cd linux-2.6.XX.tar.gz | tar xvf -
or
bzip2 -dc linux-2.6.XX.tar.bz2 | tar xvf -
Replace "XX" with the version number of the latest kernel.
Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
files. They should match the library, and not get messed up by
whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.
- You can also upgrade between 2.6.xx releases by patching. Patches are
distributed in the traditional gzip and the newer bzip2 format. To
install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the
top level directory of the kernel source (linux-2.6.xx) and execute:
gzip -cd ../patch-2.6.xx.gz | patch -p1
or
bzip2 -dc ../patch-2.6.xx.bz2 | patch -p1
(repeat xx for all versions bigger than the version of your current
source tree, _in_order_) and you should be ok. You may want to remove
the backup files (xxx~ or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no
failed patches (xxx# or xxx.rej). If there are, either you or me has
made a mistake.
Unlike patches for the 2.6.x kernels, patches for the 2.6.x.y kernels
(also known as the -stable kernels) are not incremental but instead apply
directly to the base 2.6.x kernel. Please read
Documentation/applying-patches.txt for more information.
Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
process. It determines the current kernel version and applies any
patches found.
linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux
The first argument in the command above is the location of the
kernel source. Patches are applied from the current directory, but
an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.
- If you are upgrading between releases using the stable series patches
(for example, patch-2.6.xx.y), note that these "dot-releases" are
not incremental and must be applied to the 2.6.xx base tree. For
example, if your base kernel is 2.6.12 and you want to apply the
2.6.12.3 patch, you do not and indeed must not first apply the
2.6.12.1 and 2.6.12.2 patches. Similarly, if you are running kernel
version 2.6.12.2 and want to jump to 2.6.12.3, you must first
reverse the 2.6.12.2 patch (that is, patch -R) _before_ applying
the 2.6.12.3 patch.
- Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:
cd linux
make mrproper
You should now have the sources correctly installed.
SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS
Compiling and running the 2.6.xx kernels requires up-to-date
versions of various software packages. Consult
Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required
and how to get updates for these packages. Beware that using
excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
build or operation.
BUILD directory for the kernel:
When compiling the kernel all output files will per default be
stored together with the kernel source code.
Using the option "make O=output/dir" allow you to specify an alternate
place for the output files (including .config).
Example:
kernel source code: /usr/src/linux-2.6.N
build directory: /home/name/build/kernel
To configure and build the kernel use:
cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.N
make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig
make O=/home/name/build/kernel
sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install
Please note: If the 'O=output/dir' option is used then it must be
used for all invocations of make.
CONFIGURING the kernel:
Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
version. New configuration options are added in each release, and
odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
as expected. If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will
only ask you for the answers to new questions.
- Alternate configuration commands are:
"make menuconfig" Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
"make xconfig" X windows (Qt) based configuration tool.
"make gconfig" X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool.
"make oldconfig" Default all questions based on the contents of
your existing ./.config file and asking about
new config symbols.
"make silentoldconfig"
Like above, but avoids cluttering the screen
with questions already answered.
"make defconfig" Create a ./.config file by using the default
symbol values from arch/$ARCH/defconfig.
"make allyesconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'y' as much as possible.
"make allmodconfig"
Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'm' as much as possible.
"make allnoconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to 'n' as much as possible.
"make randconfig" Create a ./.config file by setting symbol
values to random values.
The allyesconfig/allmodconfig/allnoconfig/randconfig variants can
also use the environment variable KCONFIG_ALLCONFIG to specify a
filename that contains config options that the user requires to be
set to a specific value. If KCONFIG_ALLCONFIG=filename is not used,
"make *config" checks for a file named "all{yes/mod/no/random}.config"
for symbol values that are to be forced. If this file is not found,
it checks for a file named "all.config" to contain forced values.
NOTES on "make config":
- having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers
- compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386
will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386. The
kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up.
- A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
never get used in that case. The kernel will be slightly larger,
but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
have a math coprocessor or not.
- the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()). Thus you
should probably answer 'n' to the questions for
"development", "experimental", or "debugging" features.
COMPILING the kernel:
- Make sure you have at least gcc 3.2 available.
For more information, refer to Documentation/Changes.
Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel.
- Do a "make" to create a compressed kernel image. It is also
possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the
kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.
To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal
build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.
- If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you
will also have to do "make modules_install".
- Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong. This is
especially true for the development releases, since each new release
contains new code which has not been debugged. Make sure you keep a
backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well. If you
are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
do a "make modules_install".
Alternatively, before compiling, use the kernel config option
"LOCALVERSION" to append a unique suffix to the regular kernel version.
LOCALVERSION can be set in the "General Setup" menu.
- In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
image (e.g. .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation)
to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found.
- Booting a kernel directly from a floppy without the assistance of a
bootloader such as LILO, is no longer supported.
If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which
uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf. The
kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
/boot/bzImage. To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image
and copy the new image over the old one. Then, you MUST RERUN LILO
to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot
the new kernel image.
Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo.
You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your
old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not
work. See the LILO docs for more information.
After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set. Shutdown the system,
reboot, and enjoy!
If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode,
ramdisk size, etc. in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or
alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate). No need to
recompile the kernel to change these parameters.
- Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy.
IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:
- If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check
the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated
with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there
isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail
them to me (torvalds@osdl.org), and possibly to any other relevant
mailing-list or to the newsgroup.
- In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
sense). If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.
- If the bug results in a message like
unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
Oops: 0002
EIP: 0010:XXXXXXXX
eax: xxxxxxxx ebx: xxxxxxxx ecx: xxxxxxxx edx: xxxxxxxx
esi: xxxxxxxx edi: xxxxxxxx ebp: xxxxxxxx
ds: xxxx es: xxxx fs: xxxx gs: xxxx
Pid: xx, process nr: xx
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx
or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
system log, please duplicate it *exactly*. The dump may look
incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
help debugging the problem. The text above the dump is also
important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information
on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt
- If you compiled the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS you can send the dump
as is, otherwise you will have to use the "ksymoops" program to make
sense of the dump. This utility can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops.
Alternately you can do the dump lookup by hand:
- In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can
look up what the EIP value means. The hex value as such doesn't help
me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
kernel setup. What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
see which kernel function contains the offending address.
To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom. This is
the file 'linux/vmlinux'. To extract the namelist and match it against
the EIP from the kernel crash, do:
nm vmlinux | sort | less
This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
offending address. Note that the address given by the kernel
debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
you want. In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
"context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
interesting one.
If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
possible will help.
- Alternately, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you
cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the
kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make
clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config").
After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore".
You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the
point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes
with the EIP value.)
gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly)
disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.