linux/getsysstats.c: use sysinfo() instead of parsing /proc/meminfo

Profiling git's test suite, Linus noted [1] that a disproportionately
large amount of time was spent reading /proc/meminfo. This is done by
the glibc functions get_phys_pages and get_avphys_pages, but they only
need the MemTotal and MemFree fields, respectively. That same
information can be obtained with a single syscall, sysinfo, instead of
six: open, fstat, mmap, read, close, munmap. While sysinfo also
provides more than necessary, it does a lot less work than what the
kernel needs to do to provide the entire /proc/meminfo. Both strace -T
and in-app microbenchmarks shows that the sysinfo() approach is
roughly an order of magnitude faster.

sysinfo() is much older than what glibc currently requires, so I don't
think there's any reason to keep the old parsing code. Moreover, this
makes get_[av]phys_pages work even in the absence of /proc.

Linus noted that something as simple as 'bash -c "echo"' would trigger
the reading of /proc/meminfo, but gdb says that many more applications
than just bash are affected:

Starting program: /bin/bash "-c" "echo"

Breakpoint 1, __get_phys_pages () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getsysstats.c:283
283     ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getsysstats.c: No such file or directory.
(gdb) bt

So it seems that any application that uses qsort on a moderately sized
array will incur this cost (once), which is obviously proportionately
more expensive for lots of short-lived processes (such as the git test
suite).

[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/2019285

Signed-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <rv@rasmusvillemoes.dk>

	* sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getsysstats.c (__get_phys_pages):
	Use sysinfo system call instead of parsing /proc/meminfo.
	* sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/getsysstats.c (__get_avphys_pages):
	Likewise.

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/include/sys/sysinfo.h b/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/include/sys/sysinfo.h
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..45b7126b57
--- /dev/null
+++ b/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/include/sys/sysinfo.h
@@ -0,0 +1,26 @@
+/* Internal declarations for sys/sysinfo.h.
+   Copyright (C) 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
+   This file is part of the GNU C Library.
+
+   The GNU C Library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
+   modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public
+   License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
+   version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
+
+   The GNU C Library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
+   but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+   MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
+   Lesser General Public License for more details.
+
+   You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public
+   License along with the GNU C Library; if not, see
+   <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.  */
+
+#ifndef _INCLUDE_SYS_SYSINFO_H
+#define _INCLUDE_SYS_SYSINFO_H	1
+
+#include_next <sys/sysinfo.h>
+
+extern __typeof (sysinfo) __sysinfo __THROW;
+
+#endif /* sys/sysinfo.h */