History log of /lib/list_sort.c
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041b78f232bb87b2de8ca3fed50384bc7dc9c2de 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/list_sort: test: check element addresses

Improve 'lib_sort()' test and check that:
o 'cmp()' is called only for elements which were present in the original list,
i.e., the 'a' and 'b' parameters are valid
o the resulted (sorted) list consists onlly of the original elements
o intdoruce "poison" fields to make sure data around 'struc list_head' field
are not corrupted.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
014afa943d44f0df8e65bc4bd071c67772277d93 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/list_sort: test: unify test messages

This patch unifies 'list_sort_test()' messages a bit and makes sure all of
them start with the "list_sort_test:" prefix to make it obvious for users
where the messages come from.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
f3dc0e384248ea6fda0987f909007fa9ab5fb51a 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/list_sort: test: improve errors handling

The 'lib_sort()' test does not free memory if it fails, and it makes the
kernel panic if it cannot allocate memory. This patch fixes the problem.

This patch also changes several small things:
o use 'list_add()' helper instead of adding manually
o introduce temporary 'el1' variable to avoid ugly and unreadalbe
"if" statement
o make 'head' to be stack variable instead of 'kmalloc()'ed, which
simplifies code a bit

Overall, this patch is of clean-up type.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
eeee9ebb54b76a33a13d2c926ffb018a4aea410f 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/list_sort: test: use generic random32

Instead of using own pseudo-random generator, use generic linux
'random32()' function. Presumably, this should improve test coverage.

At the same time, do the following changes:
o Use shorter macro name for test list length
o Do not use strange 'l_h' name for 'struct list_head' element,
use 'list', because it is traditional name and thus, makes the
code more obvious and readable.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
bb2ab10fa693110cffa7087ffe2749d6e9a27d5f 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/list_sort: test: use more reasonable printk levels

I do not see any reason to use KERN_WARN for normal messages and
KERN_EMERG for error messages in the lib_sort testing routine. Let's use
more reasonable KERN_NORM and KERN_ERR levels.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
6d411e6c01608cefb7b9ea6712110538a1432f9f 26-Oct-2010 Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com> lib/Kconfig.debug: add list_sort debugging switch

While hunting a non-existing bug in 'list_sort()', I've improved the
'list_sort_test()' function which tests the 'list_sort()' library call.
Although at the end I found a bug in my code, but not in 'list_sort()', I
think my clean-ups and improvements are worth merging because they make
the test function better.

This patch:

Make the self-tests selectable via Kconfig rather than by manual enabling
of DEBUG_LIST_SORT.

Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
f015ac3edd84ad72f88e08a4d83c56c360aae404 01-Oct-2010 Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com> lib/list_sort: do not pass bad pointers to cmp callback

If the original list is a POT in length, the first callback from line 73
will pass a==b both pointing to the original list_head. This is dangerous
because the 'list_sort()' user can use 'container_of()' and accesses the
"containing" object, which does not necessary exist for the list head. So
the user can access RAM which does not belong to him. If this is a write
access, we can end up with memory corruption.

Signed-off-by: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Signed-off-by: Artem Bityutskiy <Artem.Bityutskiy@nokia.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
02b12b7a28faa2e9ed5a361cd08ea576ab1f1509 05-Mar-2010 Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com> lib: revise list_sort() header comment

Clarify and correct header comment of list_sort().

Signed-off-by: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
835cc0c8477fdbc59e0217891d6f11061b1ac4e2 05-Mar-2010 Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com> lib: more scalable list_sort()

XFS and UBIFS can pass long lists to list_sort(); this alternative
implementation scales better, reaching ~3x performance gain when list
length exceeds the L2 cache size.

Stand-alone program timings were run on a Core 2 duo L1=32KB L2=4MB,
gcc-4.4, with flags extracted from an Ubuntu kernel build. Object size is
581 bytes compared to 455 for Mark J. Roberts' code.

Worst case for either implementation is a list length just over a power of
two, and to roughly the same degree, so here are timing results for a
range of 2^N+1 lengths. List elements were 16 bytes each including malloc
overhead; initial order was random.

time (msec)
Tatham-Roberts
| generic-Mullis-v2
loop_count length | | ratio
4000000 2 206 294 1.427
2000000 3 176 227 1.289
1000000 5 199 172 0.864
500000 9 235 178 0.757
250000 17 243 182 0.748
125000 33 261 196 0.750
62500 65 277 209 0.754
31250 129 292 219 0.75
15625 257 317 235 0.741
7812 513 340 252 0.741
3906 1025 362 267 0.737
1953 2049 388 283 0.729 ~ L1 size
976 4097 556 323 0.580
488 8193 678 361 0.532
244 16385 773 395 0.510
122 32769 844 418 0.495
61 65537 917 454 0.495
30 131073 1128 543 0.481
15 262145 2355 869 0.369 ~ L2 size
7 524289 5597 1714 0.306
3 1048577 6218 2022 0.325

Mark's code does not actually implement the usual or generic mergesort,
but rather a variant from Simon Tatham described here:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/algorithms/listsort.html

Simon's algorithm performs O(log N) passes over the entire input list,
doing merges of sublists that double in size on each pass. The generic
algorithm instead merges pairs of equal length lists as early as possible,
in recursive order. For either algorithm, the elements that extend the
list beyond power-of-two length are a special case, handled as nearly as
possible as a "rounding-up" to a full POT.

Some intuition for the locality of reference implications of merge order
may be gotten by watching this animation:

http://www.sorting-algorithms.com/merge-sort

Simon's algorithm requires only O(1) extra space rather than the generic
algorithm's O(log N), but in my non-recursive implementation the actual
O(log N) data is merely a vector of ~20 pointers, which I've put on the
stack.

Long-running list_sort() calls: If the list passed in may be long, or the
client's cmp() callback function is slow, the client's cmp() may
periodically invoke cond_resched() to voluntarily yield the CPU. All
inner loops of list_sort() call back to cmp().

Stability of the sort: distinct elements that compare equal emerge from
the sort in the same order as with Mark's code, for simple test cases. A
boot-time test is provided to verify this and other correctness
requirements.

A kernel that uses drm.ko appears to run normally with this change; I have
no suitable hardware to similarly test the use by UBIFS.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: style tweaks, fix comment, make list_sort_test __init]
Signed-off-by: Don Mullis <don.mullis@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>
Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Cc: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c
2c761270d5520dd84ab0b4e47c24d99ff8503c38 12-Jan-2010 Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com> lib: Introduce generic list_sort function

There are two copies of list_sort() in the tree already, one in the DRM
code, another in ubifs. Now XFS needs this as well. Create a generic
list_sort() function from the ubifs version and convert existing users
to it so we don't end up with yet another copy in the tree.

Signed-off-by: Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>
Acked-by: Dave Airlie <airlied@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Artem Bityutskiy <dedekind@infradead.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
/lib/list_sort.c