Re: [External] Re: [PATCH] cgroup: rstat: Simplified cgroup_base_stat_flush() update last_bstat logic

[Hao Jia <jiahao.os@bytedance.com>]

On 2023/5/23 Michal Koutný wrote:
> Hello Jia.
> 
> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 12:15:57PM +0800, Hao Jia <jiahao.os@bytedance.com> wrote:
>> Maybe something like this?
> 
> (Next time please send with a version bump in subject.)

Thanks for your review, I will do it in the next version.

> 
> 
>> In cgroup_base_stat_flush() function, {rstatc, cgrp}->last_bstat
>> needs to be updated to the current {rstatc, cgrp}->bstat after the
>> calculation.
>>
>> For the rstatc->last_bstat case, rstatc->bstat may be updated on other
>> cpus during our calculation, resulting in inconsistent rstatc->bstat
>> statistics for the two reads. So we use the temporary variable @cur to
>> record the read statc->bstat statistics, and use @cur to update
>> rstatc->last_bstat.
> 
> If a concurrent update happens after sample of bstat was taken for
> calculation, it won't be reflected in the flushed result.
> But subsequent flush will use the updated bstat and the difference from
> last_bstat would account for that concurrent change (and any other
> changes between the flushes).
> 
> IOW flushing cannot prevent concurrent updates but it will give
> eventually consistent (repeated without more updates) results.
> 

Yes, so we need @curr to record the bstat value after the sequence fetch 
is completed.


>> It is better for us to assign directly instead of using
>> cgroup_base_stat_add() to update {rstatc, cgrp}->last_bstat.
> 
> Or do you mean the copying is faster then arithmetics?
> 

Yes, but it may not be obvious.
Another reason is that when we complete an update, we snapshot 
last_bstat as the current bstat, which is better for readers to 
understand. Arithmetics is somewhat obscure.

Thanks,
Hao