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  1. 11 Nov, 2008 3 commits
    • Steven Rostedt's avatar
      ring-buffer: buffer record on/off switch · a3583244
      Steven Rostedt authored 
      Impact: enable/disable ring buffer recording API added

Several kernel developers have requested that there be a way to stop
recording into the ring buffers with a simple switch that can also
be enabled from userspace. This patch addes a new kernel API to the
ring buffers called:

 tracing_on()
 tracing_off()

When tracing_off() is called, all ring buffers will not be able to record
into their buffers.

tracing_on() will enable the ring buffers again.

These two act like an on/off switch. That is, there is no counting of the
number of times tracing_off or tracing_on has been called.

A new file is added to the debugfs/tracing directory called

  tracing_on

This allows for userspace applications to also flip the switch.

  echo 0 > debugfs/tracing/tracing_on

disables the tracing.

  echo 1 > /debugfs/tracing/tracing_on

enables it.

Note, this does not disable or enable any tracers. It only sets or clears
a flag that needs to be set in order for the ring buffers to write to
their buffers. It is a global flag, and affects all ring buffers.

The buffers start out with tracing_on enabled.

There are now three flags that control recording into the buffers:

 tracing_on: which affects all ring buffer tracers.

 buffer->record_disabled: which affects an allocated buffer, which may be set
     if an anomaly is detected, and tracing is disabled.

 cpu_buffer->record_disabled: which is set by tracing_stop() or if an
     anomaly is detected. tracing_start can not reenable this if
     an anomaly occurred.

The userspace debugfs/tracing/tracing_enabled is implemented with
tracing_stop() but the user space code can not enable it if the kernel
called tracing_stop().

Userspace can enable the tracing_on even if the kernel disabled it.
It is just a switch used to stop tracing if a condition was hit.
tracing_on is not for protecting critical areas in the kernel nor is
it for stopping tracing if an anomaly occurred. This is because userspace
can reenable it at any time.

Side effect: With this patch, I discovered a dead variable in ftrace.c
  called tracing_on. This patch removes it.
Signed-off-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
      a3583244
    • Steven Rostedt's avatar
      ring-buffer: prevent infinite looping on time stamping · 4143c5cb
      Steven Rostedt authored 
      Impact: removal of unnecessary looping

The lockless part of the ring buffer allows for reentry into the code
from interrupts. A timestamp is taken, a test is preformed and if it
detects that an interrupt occurred that did tracing, it tries again.

The problem arises if the timestamp code itself causes a trace.
The detection will detect this and loop again. The difference between
this and an interrupt doing tracing, is that this will fail every time,
and cause an infinite loop.

Currently, we test if the loop happens 1000 times, and if so, it will
produce a warning and disable the ring buffer.

The problem with this approach is that it makes it difficult to perform
some types of tracing (tracing the timestamp code itself).

Each trace entry has a delta timestamp from the previous entry.
If a trace entry is reserved but and interrupt occurs and traces before
the previous entry is commited, the delta timestamp for that entry will
be zero. This actually makes sense in terms of tracing, because the
interrupt entry happened before the preempted entry was commited, so
one may consider the two happening at the same time. The order is
still preserved in the buffer.

With this idea, instead of trying to get a new timestamp if an interrupt
made it in between the timestamp and the test, the entry could simply
make the delta zero and continue. This will prevent interrupts or
tracers in the timer code from causing the above loop.
Signed-off-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
      4143c5cb
    • Steven Rostedt's avatar
      ftrace: disable tracing on resize · bf5e6519
      Steven Rostedt authored 
      Impact: fix for bug on resize

This patch addresses the bug found here:

 http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11996

When ftrace converted to the new unified trace buffer, the resizing of
the buffer was not protected as much as it was originally. If tracing
is performed while the resize occurs, then the buffer can be corrupted.

This patch disables all ftrace buffer modifications before a resize
takes place.
Signed-off-by: default avatarSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
      bf5e6519
  3. 10 Nov, 2008 8 commits
  5. 09 Nov, 2008 13 commits
  7. 08 Nov, 2008 10 commits
  9. 07 Nov, 2008 6 commits
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