Re: [PATCH V2 2/2] Documentation: filesystems: introduce proc/slabinfo to users

[Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>]

On 2/19/24 07:23, zhang fangzheng wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 19, 2024 at 12:24 PM Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 19, 2024 at 11:19:11AM +0800, Fangzheng Zhang wrote:
>> > +Note, <slabreclaim> comes from the collected results in the file
>> > +/sys/kernel/slab/$cache/reclaim_account. Next, we will mark /proc/slabinfo
>> > +as deprecated and recommend the use of either sysfs directly or
>> > +use of the "slabinfo" tool that we have been providing in linux/tools/mm.
>>
>> Wait, so you're going to all of the trouble of changing the format of
>> slabinfo (with the associated costs of updating every tool that currently
>> parses it), only to recommend that we stop using it and start using
>> tools/mm/slabinfo instead?
>>

Hi,

> The initial purpose was to obtain the type of each slab through
> a simple command 'cat proc/slabinfo'. So here, my intention is not to
> update all slabinfo-related tools for the time being, but to modify
> the version number of proc/slabinfo and further display the results
> of using the command.

I'm not sure you understand the concern. There are existing consumers of
/proc/slabinfo, that might become broken by patch 1/2. We don't even know
them all, they might not be all opensource etc. So we can't even make sure
all of them are updated. What can happen after patch 1/2:
- they keep working and ignore the new column (good)
- they include a version check and notice a new unsupported version and
refuse to work
- confused by the new column they start throwing error, or report wrong
stats (that's worse)

>> How about we simply do nothing?

Agreed wrt modifying /proc/slabinfo

> The note here means what changes will occur after
> we modify the version number of proc/slabinfo to 2.2.
> As for the replacement of tools/mm/slabinfo (that inspired
> by Christoph’s suggestions), it will be implemented in the next version
> or even the later version.

So what is your motivation for all this in the first place? You have some
monitoring tool that relies on /proc/slabinfo and want to distinguish
reclaimable caches? So you can change it to parse the /sys directories. Is
it more work? Yes, but you only have to do that once per boot, because
unlike the object/memory stats in /proc/slabinfo, the reclaimable flag will
not change for a cache.

Would tools/mm/slabinfo almost work for you, but you're missing something?
Then send patches for that in the first place. Changing /proc/slabinfo (and
breaking other consumers) for a quick and easy fix with a different solution
planned for the future is simply not feasible.

HTH,
Vlastimil

> Thanks!