On 5/26/21 7:44 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
On Wed, May 26, 2021 at 2:01 PM Jens Axboe <axboe(a)kernel.dk>
wrote:
> On 5/26/21 11:54 AM, Jens Axboe wrote:
>> On 5/26/21 11:31 AM, Jens Axboe wrote:
>>> On 5/26/21 11:15 AM, Jens Axboe wrote:
>>>> On 5/25/21 8:04 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 9:11 PM Jens Axboe <axboe(a)kernel.dk>
wrote:
>>>>>> On 5/24/21 1:59 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>>>>>>> That said, audit is not for everyone, and we have build time
and
>>>>>>> runtime options to help make life easier. Beyond simply
disabling
>>>>>>> audit at compile time a number of Linux distributions
effectively
>>>>>>> shortcut audit at runtime by adding a "never" rule
to the audit
>>>>>>> filter, for example:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> % auditctl -a task,never
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As has been brought up, the issue we're facing is that
distros have
>>>>>> CONFIG_AUDIT=y and hence the above is the best real world case
outside
>>>>>> of people doing custom kernels. My question would then be how
much
>>>>>> overhead the above will add, considering it's an entry/exit
call per op.
>>>>>> If auditctl is turned off, what is the expectation in turns of
overhead?
>>>>>
>>>>> I commented on that case in my last email to Pavel, but I'll try
to go
>>>>> over it again in a little more detail.
>>>>>
>>>>> As we discussed earlier in this thread, we can skip the
req->opcode
>>>>> check before both the _entry and _exit calls, so we are left with
just
>>>>> the bare audit calls in the io_uring code. As the _entry and _exit
>>>>> functions are small, I've copied them and their supporting
functions
>>>>> below and I'll try to explain what would happen in
CONFIG_AUDIT=y,
>>>>> "task,never" case.
>>>>>
>>>>> + static inline struct audit_context *audit_context(void)
>>>>> + {
>>>>> + return current->audit_context;
>>>>> + }
>>>>>
>>>>> + static inline bool audit_dummy_context(void)
>>>>> + {
>>>>> + void *p = audit_context();
>>>>> + return !p || *(int *)p;
>>>>> + }
>>>>>
>>>>> + static inline void audit_uring_entry(u8 op)
>>>>> + {
>>>>> + if (unlikely(audit_enabled && audit_context()))
>>>>> + __audit_uring_entry(op);
>>>>> + }
>>>>>
>>>>> We have one if statement where the conditional checks on two
>>>>> individual conditions. The first (audit_enabled) is simply a check
to
>>>>> see if anyone has "turned on" auditing at runtime;
historically this
>>>>> worked rather well, and still does in a number of places, but ever
>>>>> since systemd has taken to forcing audit on regardless of the
admin's
>>>>> audit configuration it is less useful. The second (audit_context())
>>>>> is a check to see if an audit_context has been allocated for the
>>>>> current task. In the case of "task,never"
current->audit_context will
>>>>> be NULL (see audit_alloc()) and the __audit_uring_entry() slowpath
>>>>> will never be called.
>>>>>
>>>>> Worst case here is checking the value of audit_enabled and
>>>>> current->audit_context. Depending on which you think is more
likely
>>>>> we can change the order of the check so that the
>>>>> current->audit_context check is first if you feel that is more
likely
>>>>> to be NULL than audit_enabled is to be false (it may be that way
now).
>>>>>
>>>>> + static inline void audit_uring_exit(int success, long code)
>>>>> + {
>>>>> + if (unlikely(!audit_dummy_context()))
>>>>> + __audit_uring_exit(success, code);
>>>>> + }
>>>>>
>>>>> The exit call is very similar to the entry call, but in the
>>>>> "task,never" case it is very simple as the first check to
be performed
>>>>> is the current->audit_context check which we know to be NULL.
The
>>>>> __audit_uring_exit() slowpath will never be called.
>>>>
>>>> I actually ran some numbers this morning. The test base is 5.13+, and
>>>> CONFIG_AUDIT=y and CONFIG_AUDITSYSCALL=y is set for both the baseline
>>>> test and the test with this series applied. I used your git branch as of
>>>> this morning.
>>>>
>>>> The test case is my usual peak perf test, which is random reads at
>>>> QD=128 and using polled IO. It's a single core test, not threaded. I
ran
>>>> two different tests - one was having a thread just do the IO, the other
>>>> is using SQPOLL to do the IO for us. The device is capable than more
>>>> IOPS than a single core can deliver, so we're CPU limited in this
test.
>>>> Hence it's a good test case as it does actual work, and shows
software
>>>> overhead quite nicely. Runs are very stable (less than 0.5% difference
>>>> between runs on the same base), yet I did average 4 runs.
>>>>
>>>> Kernel SQPOLL IOPS Perf diff
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>>> 5.13 0 3029872 0.0%
>>>> 5.13 1 3031056 0.0%
>>>> 5.13 + audit 0 2894160 -4.5%
>>>> 5.13 + audit 1 2886168 -4.8%
>>>>
>>>> That's an immediate drop in perf of almost 5%. Looking at a quick
>>>> profile of it (nothing fancy, just checking for 'audit' in the
profile)
>>>> shows this:
>>>>
>>>> + 2.17% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_uring_entry
>>>> + 0.71% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_uring_exit
>>>> 0.07% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_syscall_entry
>>>> 0.02% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_syscall_exit
>>>>
>>>> Note that this is with _no_ rules!
>>>
>>> io_uring also supports a NOP command, which basically just measures
>>> reqs/sec through the interface. Ran that as well:
>>>
>>> Kernel SQPOLL IOPS Perf diff
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>> 5.13 0 31.05M 0.0%
>>> 5.13 + audit 0 25.31M -18.5%
>>>
>>> and profile for the latter includes:
>>>
>>> + 5.19% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_uring_entry
>>> + 4.31% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_uring_exit
>>> 0.26% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_syscall_entry
>>> 0.08% io_uring [kernel.vmlinux] [k] __audit_syscall_exit
>>
>> As Pavel correctly pointed it, looks like auditing is enabled. And
>> indeed it was! Hence the above numbers is without having turned off
>> auditing. Running the NOPs after having turned off audit, we get 30.6M
>> IOPS, which is down about 1.5% from the baseline. The results for the
>> polled random read test above did _not_ change from this, they are still
>> down the same amount.
>>
>> Note, and I should have included this in the first email, this is not
>> any kind of argument for or against audit logging. It's purely meant to
>> be a set of numbers that show how the current series impacts
>> performance.
>
> And finally, just checking if we make it optional per opcode if we see
> any real impact, and the answer is no. Using the below patch which
> effectively bypasses audit calls unless the opcode has flagged the need
> to do so, I cannot measure any difference in perf (as expected).
>
> To turn this into something useful, my suggestion as a viable path
> forward would be:
>
> 1) Use something like the below patch and flag request types that we
> want to do audit logging for.
>
> 2) As Pavel suggested, eliminate the need for having both and entry/exit
> hook, turning it into just one. That effectively cuts the number of
> checks and calls in half.
I suspect the updated working-io_uring branch with HEAD at
1f25193a3f54 (updated a short time ago, see my last email in this
thread) will improve performance. Also, as has been mention several
See the email you replied to, ~1.5% was basically an overhead of
two `if (io_op_defs[req->opcode].audit)` in case of nops, where at
least once req->opcode is cached. But to be completely fair, misses
unlikely
--
Pavel Begunkov