| Short users guide for SLUB |
| -------------------------- |
| |
| The basic philosophy of SLUB is very different from SLAB. SLAB |
| requires rebuilding the kernel to activate debug options for all |
| slab caches. SLUB always includes full debugging but it is off by default. |
| SLUB can enable debugging only for selected slabs in order to avoid |
| an impact on overall system performance which may make a bug more |
| difficult to find. |
| |
| In order to switch debugging on one can add a option "slub_debug" |
| to the kernel command line. That will enable full debugging for |
| all slabs. |
| |
| Typically one would then use the "slabinfo" command to get statistical |
| data and perform operation on the slabs. By default slabinfo only lists |
| slabs that have data in them. See "slabinfo -h" for more options when |
| running the command. slabinfo can be compiled with |
| |
| gcc -o slabinfo Documentation/vm/slabinfo.c |
| |
| Some of the modes of operation of slabinfo require that slub debugging |
| be enabled on the command line. F.e. no tracking information will be |
| available without debugging on and validation can only partially |
| be performed if debugging was not switched on. |
| |
| Some more sophisticated uses of slub_debug: |
| ------------------------------------------- |
| |
| Parameters may be given to slub_debug. If none is specified then full |
| debugging is enabled. Format: |
| |
| slub_debug=<Debug-Options> Enable options for all slabs |
| slub_debug=<Debug-Options>,<slab name> |
| Enable options only for select slabs |
| |
| Possible debug options are |
| F Sanity checks on (enables SLAB_DEBUG_FREE. Sorry |
| SLAB legacy issues) |
| Z Red zoning |
| P Poisoning (object and padding) |
| U User tracking (free and alloc) |
| T Trace (please only use on single slabs) |
| - Switch all debugging off (useful if the kernel is |
| configured with CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG_ON) |
| |
| F.e. in order to boot just with sanity checks and red zoning one would specify: |
| |
| slub_debug=FZ |
| |
| Trying to find an issue in the dentry cache? Try |
| |
| slub_debug=,dentry_cache |
| |
| to only enable debugging on the dentry cache. |
| |
| Red zoning and tracking may realign the slab. We can just apply sanity checks |
| to the dentry cache with |
| |
| slub_debug=F,dentry_cache |
| |
| In case you forgot to enable debugging on the kernel command line: It is |
| possible to enable debugging manually when the kernel is up. Look at the |
| contents of: |
| |
| /sys/slab/<slab name>/ |
| |
| Look at the writable files. Writing 1 to them will enable the |
| corresponding debug option. All options can be set on a slab that does |
| not contain objects. If the slab already contains objects then sanity checks |
| and tracing may only be enabled. The other options may cause the realignment |
| of objects. |
| |
| Careful with tracing: It may spew out lots of information and never stop if |
| used on the wrong slab. |
| |
| Slab merging |
| ------------ |
| |
| If no debug options are specified then SLUB may merge similar slabs together |
| in order to reduce overhead and increase cache hotness of objects. |
| slabinfo -a displays which slabs were merged together. |
| |
| Slab validation |
| --------------- |
| |
| SLUB can validate all object if the kernel was booted with slub_debug. In |
| order to do so you must have the slabinfo tool. Then you can do |
| |
| slabinfo -v |
| |
| which will test all objects. Output will be generated to the syslog. |
| |
| This also works in a more limited way if boot was without slab debug. |
| In that case slabinfo -v simply tests all reachable objects. Usually |
| these are in the cpu slabs and the partial slabs. Full slabs are not |
| tracked by SLUB in a non debug situation. |
| |
| Getting more performance |
| ------------------------ |
| |
| To some degree SLUB's performance is limited by the need to take the |
| list_lock once in a while to deal with partial slabs. That overhead is |
| governed by the order of the allocation for each slab. The allocations |
| can be influenced by kernel parameters: |
| |
| slub_min_objects=x (default 4) |
| slub_min_order=x (default 0) |
| slub_max_order=x (default 1) |
| |
| slub_min_objects allows to specify how many objects must at least fit |
| into one slab in order for the allocation order to be acceptable. |
| In general slub will be able to perform this number of allocations |
| on a slab without consulting centralized resources (list_lock) where |
| contention may occur. |
| |
| slub_min_order specifies a minim order of slabs. A similar effect like |
| slub_min_objects. |
| |
| slub_max_order specified the order at which slub_min_objects should no |
| longer be checked. This is useful to avoid SLUB trying to generate |
| super large order pages to fit slub_min_objects of a slab cache with |
| large object sizes into one high order page. |
| |
| SLUB Debug output |
| ----------------- |
| |
| Here is a sample of slub debug output: |
| |
| *** SLUB kmalloc-8: Redzone Active@0xc90f6d20 slab 0xc528c530 offset=3360 flags=0x400000c3 inuse=61 freelist=0xc90f6d58 |
| Bytes b4 0xc90f6d10: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a ........ZZZZZZZZ |
| Object 0xc90f6d20: 31 30 31 39 2e 30 30 35 1019.005 |
| Redzone 0xc90f6d28: 00 cc cc cc . |
| FreePointer 0xc90f6d2c -> 0xc90f6d58 |
| Last alloc: get_modalias+0x61/0xf5 jiffies_ago=53 cpu=1 pid=554 |
| Filler 0xc90f6d50: 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a 5a ZZZZZZZZ |
| [<c010523d>] dump_trace+0x63/0x1eb |
| [<c01053df>] show_trace_log_lvl+0x1a/0x2f |
| [<c010601d>] show_trace+0x12/0x14 |
| [<c0106035>] dump_stack+0x16/0x18 |
| [<c017e0fa>] object_err+0x143/0x14b |
| [<c017e2cc>] check_object+0x66/0x234 |
| [<c017eb43>] __slab_free+0x239/0x384 |
| [<c017f446>] kfree+0xa6/0xc6 |
| [<c02e2335>] get_modalias+0xb9/0xf5 |
| [<c02e23b7>] dmi_dev_uevent+0x27/0x3c |
| [<c027866a>] dev_uevent+0x1ad/0x1da |
| [<c0205024>] kobject_uevent_env+0x20a/0x45b |
| [<c020527f>] kobject_uevent+0xa/0xf |
| [<c02779f1>] store_uevent+0x4f/0x58 |
| [<c027758e>] dev_attr_store+0x29/0x2f |
| [<c01bec4f>] sysfs_write_file+0x16e/0x19c |
| [<c0183ba7>] vfs_write+0xd1/0x15a |
| [<c01841d7>] sys_write+0x3d/0x72 |
| [<c0104112>] sysenter_past_esp+0x5f/0x99 |
| [<b7f7b410>] 0xb7f7b410 |
| ======================= |
| @@@ SLUB kmalloc-8: Restoring redzone (0xcc) from 0xc90f6d28-0xc90f6d2b |
| |
| |
| |
| If SLUB encounters a corrupted object then it will perform the following |
| actions: |
| |
| 1. Isolation and report of the issue |
| |
| This will be a message in the system log starting with |
| |
| *** SLUB <slab cache affected>: <What went wrong>@<object address> |
| offset=<offset of object into slab> flags=<slabflags> |
| inuse=<objects in use in this slab> freelist=<first free object in slab> |
| |
| 2. Report on how the problem was dealt with in order to ensure the continued |
| operation of the system. |
| |
| These are messages in the system log beginning with |
| |
| @@@ SLUB <slab cache affected>: <corrective action taken> |
| |
| |
| In the above sample SLUB found that the Redzone of an active object has |
| been overwritten. Here a string of 8 characters was written into a slab that |
| has the length of 8 characters. However, a 8 character string needs a |
| terminating 0. That zero has overwritten the first byte of the Redzone field. |
| After reporting the details of the issue encountered the @@@ SLUB message |
| tell us that SLUB has restored the redzone to its proper value and then |
| system operations continue. |
| |
| Various types of lines can follow the @@@ SLUB line: |
| |
| Bytes b4 <address> : <bytes> |
| Show a few bytes before the object where the problem was detected. |
| Can be useful if the corruption does not stop with the start of the |
| object. |
| |
| Object <address> : <bytes> |
| The bytes of the object. If the object is inactive then the bytes |
| typically contain poisoning values. Any non-poison value shows a |
| corruption by a write after free. |
| |
| Redzone <address> : <bytes> |
| The redzone following the object. The redzone is used to detect |
| writes after the object. All bytes should always have the same |
| value. If there is any deviation then it is due to a write after |
| the object boundary. |
| |
| Freepointer |
| The pointer to the next free object in the slab. May become |
| corrupted if overwriting continues after the red zone. |
| |
| Last alloc: |
| Last free: |
| Shows the address from which the object was allocated/freed last. |
| We note the pid, the time and the CPU that did so. This is usually |
| the most useful information to figure out where things went wrong. |
| Here get_modalias() did an kmalloc(8) instead of a kmalloc(9). |
| |
| Filler <address> : <bytes> |
| Unused data to fill up the space in order to get the next object |
| properly aligned. In the debug case we make sure that there are |
| at least 4 bytes of filler. This allow for the detection of writes |
| before the object. |
| |
| Following the filler will be a stackdump. That stackdump describes the |
| location where the error was detected. The cause of the corruption is more |
| likely to be found by looking at the information about the last alloc / free. |
| |
| Christoph Lameter, <clameter@sgi.com>, May 23, 2007 |