From 9dcc38e2813e0cd3b195940c98b181ce6ede8f20 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Drew DeVault Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2021 14:46:09 -0800 Subject: Increase default MLOCK_LIMIT to 8 MiB This limit has not been updated since 2008, when it was increased to 64 KiB at the request of GnuPG. Until recently, the main use-cases for this feature were (1) preventing sensitive memory from being swapped, as in GnuPG's use-case; and (2) real-time use-cases. In the first case, little memory is called for, and in the second case, the user is generally in a position to increase it if they need more. The introduction of IOURING_REGISTER_BUFFERS adds a third use-case: preparing fixed buffers for high-performance I/O. This use-case will take as much of this memory as it can get, but is still limited to 64 KiB by default, which is very little. This increases the limit to 8 MB, which was chosen fairly arbitrarily as a more generous, but still conservative, default value. It is also possible to raise this limit in userspace. This is easily done, for example, in the use-case of a network daemon: systemd, for instance, provides for this via LimitMEMLOCK in the service file; OpenRC via the rc_ulimit variables. However, there is no established userspace facility for configuring this outside of daemons: end-user applications do not presently have access to a convenient means of raising their limits. The buck, as it were, stops with the kernel. It's much easier to address it here than it is to bring it to hundreds of distributions, and it can only realistically be relied upon to be high-enough by end-user software if it is more-or-less ubiquitous. Most distros don't change this particular rlimit from the kernel-supplied default value, so a change here will easily provide that ubiquity. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20211028080813.15966-1-sir@cmpwn.com Signed-off-by: Drew DeVault Acked-by: Jens Axboe Acked-by: Cyril Hrubis Acked-by: Johannes Weiner Cc: Pavel Begunkov Cc: David Hildenbrand Cc: Jason Gunthorpe Cc: Andrew Dona-Couch Cc: Ammar Faizi Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds --- include/uapi/linux/resource.h | 13 ++++++++++--- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) (limited to 'include') diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/resource.h b/include/uapi/linux/resource.h index 74ef57b38f9f..ac5d6a3031db 100644 --- a/include/uapi/linux/resource.h +++ b/include/uapi/linux/resource.h @@ -66,10 +66,17 @@ struct rlimit64 { #define _STK_LIM (8*1024*1024) /* - * GPG2 wants 64kB of mlocked memory, to make sure pass phrases - * and other sensitive information are never written to disk. + * Limit the amount of locked memory by some sane default: + * root can always increase this limit if needed. + * + * The main use-cases are (1) preventing sensitive memory + * from being swapped; (2) real-time operations; (3) via + * IOURING_REGISTER_BUFFERS. + * + * The first two don't need much. The latter will take as + * much as it can get. 8MB is a reasonably sane default. */ -#define MLOCK_LIMIT ((PAGE_SIZE > 64*1024) ? PAGE_SIZE : 64*1024) +#define MLOCK_LIMIT (8*1024*1024) /* * Due to binary compatibility, the actual resource numbers -- cgit v1.2.3