Re: [Patch][RFC] Disabling per-tgid stats on task exit in taskstats

[Shailabh Nagar <nagar@watson.ibm.com>]

Jay Lan wrote:
> Shailabh Nagar wrote:
> 
>> Paul Jackson wrote:
>>
>>> Shailabh wrote:
>>>  
>>>
>>>> I suppose this is because cpuset's offer some middle ground between
>>>> collecting data per-cpu vs. collecting it for all cpus ?
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Yes - well said.  And I have this strange tendency to see all the
>>> worlds problems as opportunities for cpuset solutions <grin>.
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> What happens when someone is using cpusets on such a machine and
>>>> changes its membership in response to other needs.  All taskstats
>>>> users would need to monitor for such changes and adjust their
>>>> processing....seems like unnecessary tying up of two unrelated
>>>> concepts.
>>>>   
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I would not expect taskstat users to monitor for such changes.
>>> I'd expect them to monitor the stats from whatever is in the
>>> cpuset they named.  If a task moves out of that cpuset to another,
>>> then tough -- that task will no longer be monitored by that
>>> particular monitoring request.
>>>
>>> Cpusets do provide a convenient middle ground, as you say, which
>>> is really useful for reducing scaling issues such as this one to
>>> a managable size.
>>>
>>> Per-cpu is too fine grained, and per-system too coarse.
>>>
>>> An unnecessary tying - yes.  But perhaps a useful one.
>>>  
>>>
>> The idea of collecting stats for a group of cpus rather than all (or
>> one) seems attractive.
>> But cpusets doesnt :-)
>>
>> How about if we did something simple like
>> having a separate listen group (within genetlink) for a reasonably
>> large number of cpus
>> and have all the messages from those cpus multicast to the listeners
>> of that group alone ?
>>
>> e.g. currently we have only one TASKSTATS_LISTEN_GROUP
>> we could reserve the following
>>    TASKSTATS_LISTEN_GROUP_0
>>    TASKSTATS_LISTEN_GROUP_1....
>>
>> where GROUP_0 handles cpus numbered 0-63 (or 31)....etc.
>>
>> Advantages would be
>>
>> 1. Most users would still need to listen to the one group as they do
>> in the current design and others could listen to more, scaling up
>> their userspace listening daemons
>> as appropriate (e.g. one daemon per listening group).
>>
>> 2. Userspace could be saved the bother of having too many streams of
>> per-cpu data and reassemble them
>> in the order they were generated.
>>
>> The moment we talk of splitting up the data stream generated by the
>> kernel I suppose we have to do some
>> kind of timestamping so reassembly in the same order can be done. I
>> can't see this mattering for the likes of
>> delay accounting and CSA but for future taskstats users, who knows.
> 
> 
> Timestamp of the taskstats messages or timestamp of the exiting task?

I meant a timestamp of the taskstats message...though the latter
(timestamp of exiting task) would also be ok since that would be called
at the same location in the exit path for each exit message sent.

> I include an exit_time field for the task as part of "Common
> Accounting Fields" in my csa_taskstats patch i sent to you. So, we
> have both start_time and exit_time.

Yes, that sort of thing should do. We would just need to generalize to the
taskstats layer.

Thanks,
Shailabh
> 
> Thanks,
>  - jay
> 
>>
>>
>> --Shailabh
>>
>>
> 

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