netconsole: Dynamic allocation of userdata buffer
The userdata buffer in struct netconsole_target is currently statically
allocated with a size of MAX_USERDATA_ITEMS * MAX_EXTRADATA_ENTRY_LEN
(16 * 256 = 4096 bytes). This wastes memory when userdata entries are
not used or when only a few entries are configured, which is common in
typical usage scenarios. It also forces us to keep MAX_USERDATA_ITEMS
small to limit the memory wasted.
Change the userdata buffer from a static array to a dynamically
allocated pointer. The buffer is now allocated on-demand in
update_userdata() whenever userdata entries are added, modified, or
removed via configfs. The implementation calculates the exact size
needed for all current userdata entries, allocates a new buffer of that
size, formats the entries into it, and atomically swaps it with the old
buffer.
This approach provides several benefits:
- Memory efficiency: Targets with no userdata use zero bytes instead of
4KB, and targets with userdata only allocate what they need;
- Scalability: Makes it practical to increase MAX_USERDATA_ITEMS to a
much larger value without imposing a fixed memory cost on every
target;
- No hot-path overhead: Allocation occurs during configuration (write to
configfs), not during message transmission
If memory allocation fails during userdata update, -ENOMEM is returned
to userspace through the configfs attribute write operation.
The sysdata buffer remains statically allocated since it has a smaller
fixed size (MAX_SYSDATA_ITEMS * MAX_EXTRADATA_ENTRY_LEN = 4 * 256 = 1024
bytes) and its content length is less predictable.
Signed-off-by: Gustavo Luiz Duarte <gustavold@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Breno Leitao <leitao@debian.org>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20251119-netconsole_dynamic_extradata-v3-3-497ac3191707@meta.com
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>