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Date:      Thu, 8 Oct 2015 16:27:28 -0500
From:      Eric van Gyzen <vangyzen@FreeBSD.org>
To:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com>
Subject:   Re: RFC: Automatically Reloading /etc/resolv.conf
Message-ID:  <5616DFC0.8070404@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <CANCZdfp7k8wwU%2B0ChXD8rVK0kWq5F%2BORpjCH46Gg5qUq9Fw3xw@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <5615886F.3060601@FreeBSD.org> <CANCZdfp7k8wwU%2B0ChXD8rVK0kWq5F%2BORpjCH46Gg5qUq9Fw3xw@mail.gmail.com>

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On 10/08/2015 11:13, Warner Losh wrote:
> 
> Make sure you rate limit it.

Agreed.  As I just wrote in my other reply, calling stat() on every
query reduces queries-per-second by 15.87%.  Rate-limiting to one stat()
every ten seconds fixes it.  That is, by manually running three or four
benchmarks with and without my changes, I see no real difference.  This
was on amd64 where the cost of clock_gettime() is trivialized by vdso.

>> Disadvantage:  This would persistently allocate an open file and a
>> kqueue for every thread that ever uses the resolver, for the life of the
>> thread.  This seems fairly expensive.
>>
> 
> Why does this follow? Can't you have a global one for the process?

Well, gee, that seems like a good compromise, now that you mention it.
;-)  Seriously, I simply didn't consider that.

Given that the rate-limited stat() approach is so cheap, I wonder if
it's worth the trouble to try the global kqueue approach.

>> NetBSD uses this approach.  It mitigates most of the space-cost by using
>> a shared pool of res_state objects, instead of one per thread [that uses
>> the resolver].  On each query, a thread allocates/borrows a res_state
>> from the pool, uses it, and returns it.  So, the number of objects is
>> only the high water mark of the number of threads _concurrently_ issuing
>> resolver queries.n
>>
> 
> What's the locking scaleability here when resolv.conf changes?

The mutex is only held during one or two SLIST operations, so the
locking is independent of resolv.conf changing.  Maybe I misunderstood
your question?

>> FYI, I'm leaning toward the "stat" approach.
>>
> 
> It sounds simpler to implement, but likely a higher overhead than the
> kqueue approach. resolv.conf changes on an time scale measured in minutes
> or hours for the mobile user, and on the scale of years for servers.
> Polling on the scale of seconds (at least two orders of magnitude faster
> than the rate of change) seems like a lot of extra work over the life of
> resolv.conf.

On the other hand, when changes _are_ needed, you don't want to restart
critical services in order to make them effective.  (This is my
motivation, in fact.)  It would be trivial to add a "no-reload" option
so performance-sensitive users can turn it off.  In fact, I half
expected this request from someone focused on embedded work, such as
yourself.  ;-)

Eric



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