tree 467f83c94eb14f8f34508efe891c0dcc62a7ac24
parent 828716c28fe4aa232ea280ea8ed6fb103eefb6ac
author Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com> 1316546676 -0700
committer Casey Schaufler <cschaufler@cschaufler-intel.(none)> 1318454593 -0700

Smack: Rule list lookup performance

This patch is targeted for the smack-next tree.

Smack access checks suffer from two significant performance
issues. In cases where there are large numbers of rules the
search of the single list of rules is wasteful. Comparing the
string values of the smack labels is less efficient than a
numeric comparison would.

These changes take advantage of the Smack label list, which
maintains the mapping of Smack labels to secids and optional
CIPSO labels. Because the labels are kept perpetually, an
access check can be done strictly based on the address of the
label in the list without ever looking at the label itself.
Rather than keeping one global list of rules the rules with
a particular subject label can be based off of that label
list entry. The access check need never look at entries that
do not use the current subject label.

This requires that packets coming off the network with
CIPSO direct Smack labels that have never been seen before
be treated carefully. The only case where they could be
delivered is where the receiving socket has an IPIN star
label, so that case is explicitly addressed.

On a system with 39,800 rules (200 labels in all permutations)
a system with this patch runs an access speed test in 5% of
the time of the old version. That should be a best case
improvement. If all of the rules are associated with the
same subject label and all of the accesses are for processes
with that label (unlikely) the improvement is about 30%.

Signed-off-by: Casey Schaufler <casey@schaufler-ca.com>