This pull request goes with only a few sysctl moves from the
kernel/sysctl.c file, the rest of the work has been put towards
deprecating two API calls which incur recursion and prevent us
from simplifying the registration process / saving memory per
move. Most of the changes have been soaking on linux-next since
v6.3-rc3.
I've slowed down the kernel/sysctl.c moves due to Matthew Wilcox's
feedback that we should see if we could *save* memory with these
moves instead of incurring more memory. We currently incur more
memory since when we move a syctl from kernel/sysclt.c out to its
own file we end up having to add a new empty sysctl used to register
it. To achieve saving memory we want to allow syctls to be passed
without requiring the end element being empty, and just have our
registration process rely on ARRAY_SIZE(). Without this, supporting
both styles of sysctls would make the sysctl registration pretty
brittle, hard to read and maintain as can be seen from Meng Tang's
efforts to do just this [0]. Fortunately, in order to use ARRAY_SIZE()
for all sysctl registrations also implies doing the work to deprecate
two API calls which use recursion in order to support sysctl
declarations with subdirectories.
And so during this development cycle quite a bit of effort went into
this deprecation effort. I've annotated the following two APIs are
deprecated and in few kernel releases we should be good to remove them:
* register_sysctl_table()
* register_sysctl_paths()
During this merge window we should be able to deprecate and unexport
register_sysctl_paths(), we can probably do that towards the end
of this merge window.
Deprecating register_sysctl_table() will take a bit more time but
this pull request goes with a few example of how to do this.
As it turns out each of the conversions to move away from either of
these two API calls *also* saves memory. And so long term, all these
changes *will* prove to have saved a bit of memory on boot.
The way I see it then is if remove a user of one deprecated call, it
gives us enough savings to move one kernel/sysctl.c out from the
generic arrays as we end up with about the same amount of bytes.
Since deprecating register_sysctl_table() and register_sysctl_paths()
does not require maintainer coordination except the final unexport
you'll see quite a bit of these changes from other pull requests, I've
just kept the stragglers after rc3.
Most of these changes have been soaking on linux-next since around rc3.
[0] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ZAD+cpbrqlc5vmry@bombadil.infradead.org
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Merge tag 'sysctl-6.4-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/linux
Pull sysctl updates from Luis Chamberlain:
"This only does a few sysctl moves from the kernel/sysctl.c file, the
rest of the work has been put towards deprecating two API calls which
incur recursion and prevent us from simplifying the registration
process / saving memory per move. Most of the changes have been
soaking on linux-next since v6.3-rc3.
I've slowed down the kernel/sysctl.c moves due to Matthew Wilcox's
feedback that we should see if we could *save* memory with these moves
instead of incurring more memory. We currently incur more memory since
when we move a syctl from kernel/sysclt.c out to its own file we end
up having to add a new empty sysctl used to register it. To achieve
saving memory we want to allow syctls to be passed without requiring
the end element being empty, and just have our registration process
rely on ARRAY_SIZE(). Without this, supporting both styles of sysctls
would make the sysctl registration pretty brittle, hard to read and
maintain as can be seen from Meng Tang's efforts to do just this [0].
Fortunately, in order to use ARRAY_SIZE() for all sysctl registrations
also implies doing the work to deprecate two API calls which use
recursion in order to support sysctl declarations with subdirectories.
And so during this development cycle quite a bit of effort went into
this deprecation effort. I've annotated the following two APIs are
deprecated and in few kernel releases we should be good to remove
them:
- register_sysctl_table()
- register_sysctl_paths()
During this merge window we should be able to deprecate and unexport
register_sysctl_paths(), we can probably do that towards the end of
this merge window.
Deprecating register_sysctl_table() will take a bit more time but this
pull request goes with a few example of how to do this.
As it turns out each of the conversions to move away from either of
these two API calls *also* saves memory. And so long term, all these
changes *will* prove to have saved a bit of memory on boot.
The way I see it then is if remove a user of one deprecated call, it
gives us enough savings to move one kernel/sysctl.c out from the
generic arrays as we end up with about the same amount of bytes.
Since deprecating register_sysctl_table() and register_sysctl_paths()
does not require maintainer coordination except the final unexport
you'll see quite a bit of these changes from other pull requests, I've
just kept the stragglers after rc3"
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/ZAD+cpbrqlc5vmry@bombadil.infradead.org [0]
* tag 'sysctl-6.4-rc1' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/linux: (29 commits)
fs: fix sysctls.c built
mm: compaction: remove incorrect #ifdef checks
mm: compaction: move compaction sysctl to its own file
mm: memory-failure: Move memory failure sysctls to its own file
arm: simplify two-level sysctl registration for ctl_isa_vars
ia64: simplify one-level sysctl registration for kdump_ctl_table
utsname: simplify one-level sysctl registration for uts_kern_table
ntfs: simplfy one-level sysctl registration for ntfs_sysctls
coda: simplify one-level sysctl registration for coda_table
fs/cachefiles: simplify one-level sysctl registration for cachefiles_sysctls
xfs: simplify two-level sysctl registration for xfs_table
nfs: simplify two-level sysctl registration for nfs_cb_sysctls
nfs: simplify two-level sysctl registration for nfs4_cb_sysctls
lockd: simplify two-level sysctl registration for nlm_sysctls
proc_sysctl: enhance documentation
xen: simplify sysctl registration for balloon
md: simplify sysctl registration
hv: simplify sysctl registration
scsi: simplify sysctl registration with register_sysctl()
csky: simplify alignment sysctl registration
...
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