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Usama Arif f6f47a9ca8 squashfs: avoid thundering-herd cache wakeups
squashfs_cache_get() puts a task to sleep when its block is not cached and
every cache entry is busy.  Those sleeps are non-exclusive, so the
nr_exclusive == 1 budget squashfs_cache_put() has always passed to
wake_up() is inert and one release makes every waiter runnable.  A wakee
only returns to squashfs_cache_get() if it observes cache->unused before
the entry is reclaimed; later wakees see zero and re-queue inside
wait_event() without rescanning.  One freed entry satisfies exactly one
capacity waiter, so waking the rest is waste.

On a Meta production host serving a Python web application from a packaged
squashfs image, a 30-second trace caught 1,045,132 cache-release wake
calls and 19,511,556 wakeups: 18.7 per release, although each release
added only one reusable cache entry.  This was causing significant spikes
in CPU usage.

Make the waits exclusive, enqueueing while still holding cache->lock so
that a concurrent lookup either sees the waiter queued or the waiter sees
the block that lookup publishes.  Two things follow.

A wakee cannot be assumed to consume the entry it was woken for: it may
find its own block published meanwhile, share that entry, and leave the
freed one unclaimed.  So a wakee which shares hands its wakeup on to the
next waiter, as commit 0ddad21d3e ("pipe: use exclusive waits when
reading or writing") does with wake_next_reader.

And a waiter can now sleep through a publication of the very block it
wants, which the old broadcast gave it repeated chances to notice.  So
waiters are keyed by block: publishing wakes every waiter for that block
(nr_exclusive == 0), freeing an entry wakes one.  That needs a custom wake
callback, like wake_page_function() in mm/filemap.c, which also records
which wakeup arrived so the handoff only fires for a capacity wakee.

Broadcast is kept where more than one task can proceed - every waiter for
a published block, and the wake_up_all() on entry->wait_queue - at the
cost of walking the queue under wait_queue.lock to test the key.  Waiters
are now served FIFO with a scheduling round trip per handoff hop, so
per-waiter latency changes; the filebench run below is 4x oversubscribed,
where that should hurt most.

Measured on a 32-CPU VM against a read-only squashfs (gzip,
DECOMP_MULTI_PERCPU, FILE_DIRECT, default 8 metadata / 3 fragment cache
entries) staged in tmpfs, page cache dropped each iteration to force cold
decompression:

  elbencho, 64 threads
    metadata stat        700 ->  1320 files/s    1.9x
    small-file read       40 ->    60 MiB/s      1.5x

  filebench, 128 threads, open+read+stat+close (mean of 3x 30s)
    throughput        11,314 -> 25,186 ops/s     2.2x
    sched:sched_wakeup  27.0 ->   4.55 per op    5.9x fewer
    context switches    37.2 ->   7.64 per op    4.9x fewer

Wakeups and context switches are per operation, since the two runs did
2.2x different amounts of work.  Workloads which never queue for a cache
entry gain no wakeups.

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260807172421.3875982-1-usama.arif@linux.dev
Signed-off-by: Usama Arif <usama.arif@linux.dev>
Reviewed-by: Phillip Lougher <phillip@squashfs.org.uk>
Cc: Boris Burkov <boris@bur.io>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Rik van Riel <riel@surriel.com>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
History 2026-08-19 19:55:06 -07:00
arch m68knommu: fix on top off v7.2-rc4 2026-07-26 08:59:55 -07:00
block block: fix aligning of bounced dio read bios 2026-07-16 06:11:37 -06:00
certs treewide: fix indentation and whitespace in Kconfig files 2026-05-28 21:24:42 -07:00
crypto crypto: aes - Fix conditions for selecting MAC dependencies 2026-07-09 11:06:22 -04:00
Documentation spi: Fixes for v7.2 2026-07-26 12:13:42 -07:00
drivers rapidio: mport_cdev: fix use-after-free in dma_req_free() 2026-08-05 11:20:14 -07:00
fs squashfs: avoid thundering-herd cache wakeups 2026-08-19 19:55:06 -07:00
include include/linux/list.h: mark list_add and __list_add as __always_inline 2026-08-13 15:42:06 -07:00
init rust: allow suspicious_runtime_symbol_definitions lint for Rust >= 1.98 2026-06-29 13:02:15 +02:00
io_uring io_uring-7.2-20260724 2026-07-24 19:58:03 -07:00
ipc ipc: only destroy orphaned shm segments on sysctl write 2026-08-13 15:42:04 -07:00
kernel prctl: fix PR_SET_MM_AUXV losing the forced AT_NULL terminator 2026-08-19 19:55:05 -07:00
lib lib/interval_tree: fix allocation warning messages 2026-08-19 19:55:05 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add modern form of the LGPL-2.1 tags to the usage guide section 2025-10-22 07:58:19 +02:00
mm 13 hotfixes. All are cc:stable. 11 are for MM. All are singletons - 2026-07-27 14:36:26 -07:00
net BPF fixes: 2026-07-24 19:31:12 -07:00
rust rust: time: fix as_micros_ceil() to round correctly for negative Delta 2026-07-18 19:07:35 +02:00
samples tracing fixes for 7.2: 2026-07-12 09:46:37 -07:00
scripts checkpatch: add NOKPROBE_SYMBOL to the whitelist of lines that can occur immediately after functions 2026-08-13 15:42:09 -07:00
security keys: make keyring key-chunk byte order agree with keyring_diff_objects() 2026-07-23 18:23:39 +03:00
sound ALSA: hda/realtek - Add quirk for Dell Pro QC1255 2026-07-21 09:55:17 +02:00
tools selftests/prctl: fix non-anonymous VMA mapping in set-anon-vma-name test 2026-08-13 15:42:07 -07:00
usr kbuild: uapi: also test UAPI headers against C++ compilers 2026-03-25 13:24:42 +01:00
virt KVM/arm64 fixes for 7.2, take #2 2026-07-15 12:13:30 +02:00
.clang-format clang-format: fix formatting of guard() and scoped_guard() statements 2026-05-28 21:24:41 -07:00
.clippy.toml rust: bump Clippy's MSRV and clean incompatible_msrv allows 2026-04-07 09:51:39 +02:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.editorconfig editorconfig: add rst extension 2026-01-26 19:07:09 -08:00
.get_maintainer.ignore .get_maintainer.ignore: add Nathan Chancellor 2026-08-03 21:10:12 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set diff driver for Rust source code files 2023-05-31 17:48:25 +02:00
.gitignore SPDX patches for 7.2-rc1 2026-06-22 12:06:22 -07:00
.mailmap mailmap: update email address for Linfeng Sun 2026-08-19 19:55:05 -07:00
.pylintrc docs: Move the python libraries to tools/lib/python 2025-11-18 09:22:40 -07:00
.rustfmt.toml rust: add .rustfmt.toml 2022-09-28 09:02:20 +02:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS CREDITS: Add Wolfram Sang 2026-07-14 16:34:04 +02:00
Kbuild checksyscalls: move instance functionality into generic code 2026-04-05 09:21:32 +02:00
Kconfig io_uring: Rename KConfig to Kconfig 2025-02-19 14:53:27 -07:00
MAINTAINERS MAINTAINERS: add IRC and patchwork for LTP 2026-08-13 15:42:06 -07:00
Makefile Linux 7.2-rc5 2026-07-26 14:45:48 -07:00
README docs: add AI Coding Assistants documentation 2026-01-06 14:55:06 -07:00

Linux kernel
============

The Linux kernel is the core of any Linux operating system. It manages hardware,
system resources, and provides the fundamental services for all other software.

Quick Start
-----------

* Report a bug: See Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst
* Get the latest kernel: https://kernel.org
* Build the kernel: See Documentation/admin-guide/quickly-build-trimmed-linux.rst
* Join the community: https://lore.kernel.org/

Essential Documentation
-----------------------

All users should be familiar with:

* Building requirements: Documentation/process/changes.rst
* Code of Conduct: Documentation/process/code-of-conduct.rst
* License: See COPYING

Documentation can be built with make htmldocs or viewed online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/


Who Are You?
============

Find your role below:

* New Kernel Developer - Getting started with kernel development
* Academic Researcher - Studying kernel internals and architecture
* Security Expert - Hardening and vulnerability analysis
* Backport/Maintenance Engineer - Maintaining stable kernels
* System Administrator - Configuring and troubleshooting
* Maintainer - Leading subsystems and reviewing patches
* Hardware Vendor - Writing drivers for new hardware
* Distribution Maintainer - Packaging kernels for distros
* AI Coding Assistant - LLMs and AI-powered development tools


For Specific Users
==================

New Kernel Developer
--------------------

Welcome! Start your kernel development journey here:

* Getting Started: Documentation/process/development-process.rst
* Your First Patch: Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
* Coding Style: Documentation/process/coding-style.rst
* Build System: Documentation/kbuild/index.rst
* Development Tools: Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
* Kernel Hacking Guide: Documentation/kernel-hacking/hacking.rst
* Core APIs: Documentation/core-api/index.rst

Academic Researcher
-------------------

Explore the kernel's architecture and internals:

* Researcher Guidelines: Documentation/process/researcher-guidelines.rst
* Memory Management: Documentation/mm/index.rst
* Scheduler: Documentation/scheduler/index.rst
* Networking Stack: Documentation/networking/index.rst
* Filesystems: Documentation/filesystems/index.rst
* RCU (Read-Copy Update): Documentation/RCU/index.rst
* Locking Primitives: Documentation/locking/index.rst
* Power Management: Documentation/power/index.rst

Security Expert
---------------

Security documentation and hardening guides:

* Security Documentation: Documentation/security/index.rst
* LSM Development: Documentation/security/lsm-development.rst
* Self Protection: Documentation/security/self-protection.rst
* Reporting Vulnerabilities: Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst
* CVE Procedures: Documentation/process/cve.rst
* Embargoed Hardware Issues: Documentation/process/embargoed-hardware-issues.rst
* Security Features: Documentation/userspace-api/seccomp_filter.rst

Backport/Maintenance Engineer
-----------------------------

Maintain and stabilize kernel versions:

* Stable Kernel Rules: Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst
* Backporting Guide: Documentation/process/backporting.rst
* Applying Patches: Documentation/process/applying-patches.rst
* Subsystem Profile: Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
* Git for Maintainers: Documentation/maintainer/configure-git.rst

System Administrator
--------------------

Configure, tune, and troubleshoot Linux systems:

* Admin Guide: Documentation/admin-guide/index.rst
* Kernel Parameters: Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst
* Sysctl Tuning: Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/index.rst
* Tracing/Debugging: Documentation/trace/index.rst
* Performance Security: Documentation/admin-guide/perf-security.rst
* Hardware Monitoring: Documentation/hwmon/index.rst

Maintainer
----------

Lead kernel subsystems and manage contributions:

* Maintainer Handbook: Documentation/maintainer/index.rst
* Pull Requests: Documentation/maintainer/pull-requests.rst
* Managing Patches: Documentation/maintainer/modifying-patches.rst
* Rebasing and Merging: Documentation/maintainer/rebasing-and-merging.rst
* Development Process: Documentation/process/maintainer-handbooks.rst
* Maintainer Entry Profile: Documentation/maintainer/maintainer-entry-profile.rst
* Git Configuration: Documentation/maintainer/configure-git.rst

Hardware Vendor
---------------

Write drivers and support new hardware:

* Driver API Guide: Documentation/driver-api/index.rst
* Driver Model: Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/driver.rst
* Device Drivers: Documentation/driver-api/infrastructure.rst
* Bus Types: Documentation/driver-api/driver-model/bus.rst
* Device Tree Bindings: Documentation/devicetree/bindings/
* Power Management: Documentation/driver-api/pm/index.rst
* DMA API: Documentation/core-api/dma-api.rst

Distribution Maintainer
-----------------------

Package and distribute the kernel:

* Stable Kernel Rules: Documentation/process/stable-kernel-rules.rst
* ABI Documentation: Documentation/ABI/README
* Kernel Configuration: Documentation/kbuild/kconfig.rst
* Module Signing: Documentation/admin-guide/module-signing.rst
* Kernel Parameters: Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.rst
* Tainted Kernels: Documentation/admin-guide/tainted-kernels.rst

AI Coding Assistant
-------------------

CRITICAL: If you are an LLM or AI-powered coding assistant, you MUST read and
follow the AI coding assistants documentation before contributing to the Linux
kernel:

* Documentation/process/coding-assistants.rst

This documentation contains essential requirements about licensing, attribution,
and the Developer Certificate of Origin that all AI tools must comply with.


Communication and Support
=========================

* Mailing Lists: https://lore.kernel.org/
* IRC: #kernelnewbies on irc.oftc.net
* Bugzilla: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/
* MAINTAINERS file: Lists subsystem maintainers and mailing lists
* Email Clients: Documentation/process/email-clients.rst