This is the second attempt at importing the updated mt_list code (commit
59459ea3). The previous one was attempted with commit c618ed5ff4 ("MAJOR:
import: update mt_list to support exponential back-off") but revealed
problems with QUIC connections and was reverted.
The problem that was faced was that elements deleted inside an iterator
were no longer reset, and that if they were to be recycled in this form,
they could appear as busy to the next user. This was trivially reproduced
with this:
$ cat quic-repro.cfg
global
stats socket /tmp/sock1 level admin
stats timeout 1h
limited-quic
frontend stats
mode http
bind quic4@:8443 ssl crt rsa+dh2048.pem alpn h3
timeout client 5s
stats uri /
$ ./haproxy -db -f quic-repro.cfg &
$ h2load -c 10 -n 100000 --npn h3 https://127.0.0.1:8443/
=> hang
This was purely an API issue caused by the simplified usage of the macros
for the iterator. The original version had two backups (one full element
and one pointer) that the user had to take care of, while the new one only
uses one that is transparent for the user. But during removal, the element
still has to be unlocked if it's going to be reused.
All of this sparked discussions with Fred and Aurélien regarding the still
unclear state of locking. It was found that the lock API does too much at
once and is lacking granularity. The new version offers a much more fine-
grained control allowing to selectively lock/unlock an element, a link,
the rest of the list etc.
It was also found that plenty of places just want to free the current
element, or delete it to do anything with it, hence don't need to reset
its pointers (e.g. event_hdl). Finally it appeared obvious that the
root cause of the problem was the unclear usage of the list iterators
themselves because one does not necessarily expect the element to be
presented locked when not needed, which makes the unlock easy to overlook
during reviews.
The updated version of the list presents explicit lock status in the
macro name (_LOCKED or _UNLOCKED suffixes). When using the _LOCKED
suffix, the caller is expected to unlock the element if it intends to
reuse it. At least the status is advertised. The _UNLOCKED variant,
instead, always unlocks it before starting the loop block. This means
it's not necessary to think about unlocking it, though it's obviously
not usable with everything. A few _UNLOCKED were used at obvious places
(i.e. where the element is deleted and freed without any prior check).
Interestingly, the tests performed last year on QUIC forwarding, that
resulted in limited traffic for the original version and higher bit
rate for the new one couldn't be reproduced because since then the QUIC
stack has gaind in efficiency, and the 100 Gbps barrier is now reached
with or without the mt_list update. However the unit tests definitely
show a huge difference, particularly on EPYC platforms where the EBO
provides tremendous CPU savings.
Overall, the following changes are visible from the application code:
- mt_list_for_each_entry_safe() + 1 back elem + 1 back ptr
=> MT_LIST_FOR_EACH_ENTRY_LOCKED() or MT_LIST_FOR_EACH_ENTRY_UNLOCKED()
+ 1 back elem
- MT_LIST_DELETE_SAFE() no longer needed in MT_LIST_FOR_EACH_ENTRY_UNLOCKED()
=> just manually set iterator to NULL however.
For MT_LIST_FOR_EACH_ENTRY_LOCKED()
=> mt_list_unlock_self() (if element going to be reused) + NULL
- MT_LIST_LOCK_ELT => mt_list_lock_full()
- MT_LIST_UNLOCK_ELT => mt_list_unlock_full()
- l = MT_LIST_APPEND_LOCKED(h, e); MT_LIST_UNLOCK_ELT();
=> l=mt_list_lock_prev(h); mt_list_lock_elem(e); mt_list_unlock_full(e, l)
4e65fc66f6