user/sven/linux.git/include/linux/ring_buffer.h, branch v3.2.45

trace: Add ring buffer stats to measure rate of events

2011-08-30T16:27:45Z

The stats file under per_cpu folder provides the number of entries, overruns and other statistics about the CPU ring buffer. However, the numbers do not provide any indication of how full the ring buffer is in bytes compared to the overall size in bytes. Also, it is helpful to know the rate at which the cpu buffer is filling up. This patch adds an entry "bytes: " in printed stats for per_cpu ring buffer which provides the actual bytes consumed in the ring buffer. This field includes the number of bytes used by recorded events and the padding bytes added when moving the tail pointer to next page. It also adds the following time stamps: "oldest event ts:" - the oldest timestamp in the ring buffer "now ts:" - the timestamp at the time of reading The field "now ts" provides a consistent time snapshot to the userspace when being read. This is read from the same trace clock used by tracing event timestamps. Together, these values provide the rate at which the buffer is filling up, from the formula: bytes / (now_ts - oldest_event_ts) Signed-off-by: Vaibhav Nagarnaik Cc: Michael Rubin Cc: David Sharp Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1313531179-9323-3-git-send-email-vnagarnaik@google.com Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

tracing: Use NUMA allocation for per-cpu ring buffer pages

2011-06-15T02:04:39Z

The tracing ring buffer is a group of per-cpu ring buffers where allocation and logging is done on a per-cpu basis. The events that are generated on a particular CPU are logged in the corresponding buffer. This is to provide wait-free writes between CPUs and good NUMA node locality while accessing the ring buffer. However, the allocation routines consider NUMA locality only for buffer page metadata and not for the actual buffer page. This causes the pages to be allocated on the NUMA node local to the CPU where the allocation routine is running at the time. This patch fixes the problem by using a NUMA node specific allocation routine so that the pages are allocated from a NUMA node local to the logging CPU. I tested with the getuid_microbench from autotest. It is a simple binary that calls getuid() in a loop and measures the average time for the syscall to complete. The following command was used to test: $ getuid_microbench 1000000 Compared the numbers found on kernel with and without this patch and found that logging latency decreases by 30-50 ns/call. tracing with non-NUMA allocation - 569 ns/call tracing with NUMA allocation - 512 ns/call Signed-off-by: Vaibhav Nagarnaik Cc: Frederic Weisbecker Cc: Ingo Molnar Cc: Michael Rubin Cc: David Sharp Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1304470602-20366-1-git-send-email-vnagarnaik@google.com Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

tracing: Add an 'overwrite' trace_option.

2011-03-09T18:52:27Z

Add an "overwrite" trace_option for ftrace to control whether the buffer should be overwritten on overflow or not. The default remains to overwrite old events when the buffer is full. This patch adds the option to instead discard newest events when the buffer is full. This is useful to get a snapshot of traces just after enabling traces. Dropping the current event is also a simpler code path. Signed-off-by: David Sharp LKML-Reference: <1291844807-15481-1-git-send-email-dhsharp@google.com> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: Remove ring_buffer_event_time_delta()

2010-10-20T17:37:56Z

The ring_buffer_event_time_delta() static inline function does not have any users. Remove it. Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: Make non-consuming read less expensive with lots of cpus.

2010-04-27T17:06:35Z

When performing a non-consuming read, a synchronize_sched() is performed once for every cpu which is actively tracing. This is very expensive, and can make it take several seconds to open up the 'trace' file with lots of cpus. Only one synchronize_sched() call is actually necessary. What is desired is for all cpus to see the disabling state change. So we transform the existing sequence: for_each_cpu() { ring_buffer_read_start(); } where each ring_buffer_start() call performs a synchronize_sched(), into the following: for_each_cpu() { ring_buffer_read_prepare(); } ring_buffer_read_prepare_sync(); for_each_cpu() { ring_buffer_read_start(); } wherein only the single ring_buffer_read_prepare_sync() call needs to do the synchronize_sched(). The first phase, via ring_buffer_read_prepare(), allocates the 'iter' memory and increments ->record_disabled. In the second phase, ring_buffer_read_prepare_sync() makes sure this ->record_disabled state is visible fully to all cpus. And in the final third phase, the ring_buffer_read_start() calls reset the 'iter' objects allocated in the first phase since we now know that none of the cpus are adding trace entries any more. This makes openning the 'trace' file nearly instantaneous on a sparc64 Niagara2 box with 128 cpus tracing. Signed-off-by: David S. Miller LKML-Reference: <20100420.154711.11246950.davem@davemloft.net> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: Add place holder recording of dropped events

2010-04-01T02:57:04Z

Currently, when the ring buffer drops events, it does not record the fact that it did so. It does inform the writer that the event was dropped by returning a NULL event, but it does not put in any place holder where the event was dropped. This is not a trivial thing to add because the ring buffer mostly runs in overwrite (flight recorder) mode. That is, when the ring buffer is full, new data will overwrite old data. In a produce/consumer mode, where new data is simply dropped when the ring buffer is full, it is trivial to add the placeholder for dropped events. When there's more room to write new data, then a special event can be added to notify the reader about the dropped events. But in overwrite mode, any new write can overwrite events. A place holder can not be inserted into the ring buffer since there never may be room. A reader could also come in at anytime and miss the placeholder. Luckily, the way the ring buffer works, the read side can find out if events were lost or not, and how many events. Everytime a write takes place, if it overwrites the header page (the next read) it updates a "overrun" variable that keeps track of the number of lost events. When a reader swaps out a page from the ring buffer, it can record this number, perfom the swap, and then check to see if the number changed, and take the diff if it has, which would be the number of events dropped. This can be stored by the reader and returned to callers of the reader. Since the reader page swap will fail if the writer moved the head page since the time the reader page set up the swap, this gives room to record the overruns without worrying about races. If the reader sets up the pages, records the overrun, than performs the swap, if the swap succeeds, then the overrun variable has not been updated since the setup before the swap. For binary readers of the ring buffer, a flag is set in the header of each sub page (sub buffer) of the ring buffer. This flag is embedded in the size field of the data on the sub buffer, in the 31st bit (the size can be 32 or 64 bits depending on the architecture), but only 27 bits needs to be used for the actual size (less actually). We could add a new field in the sub buffer header to also record the number of events dropped since the last read, but this will change the format of the binary ring buffer a bit too much. Perhaps this change can be made if the information on the number of events dropped is considered important enough. Note, the notification of dropped events is only used by consuming reads or peeking at the ring buffer. Iterating over the ring buffer does not keep this information because the necessary data is only available when a page swap is made, and the iterator does not swap out pages. Cc: Robert Richter Cc: Andi Kleen Cc: Li Zefan Cc: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo Cc: "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" Cc: Frederic Weisbecker Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: only enable ring_buffer_swap_cpu when needed

2009-09-04T23:42:22Z

Since the ability to swap the cpu buffers adds a small overhead to the recording of a trace, we only want to add it when needed. Only the irqsoff and preemptoff tracers use this feature, and both are not recommended for production kernels. This patch disables its use when neither irqsoff nor preemptoff is configured. Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: remove ring_buffer_event_discard

2009-09-04T15:36:19Z

The function ring_buffer_event_discard can be used on any item in the ring buffer, even after the item was committed. This function provides no safety nets and is very race prone. An item may be safely removed from the ring buffer before it is committed with the ring_buffer_discard_commit. Since there are currently no users of this function, and because this function is racey and error prone, this patch removes it altogether. Note, removing this function also allows the counters to ignore all discarded events (patches will follow). Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

ring-buffer: make lockless

2009-07-07T22:36:12Z

This patch converts the ring buffers into a completely lockless buffer recording system. The read side still takes locks since we still serialize readers. But the writers are the ones that must be lockless (those can happen in NMIs). The main change is to the "head_page" pointer. We write to the tail, and read from the head. The "head_page" pointer in the cpu buffer is now just a reference to where to look. The real head page is now kept in the head_page->list->prev->next pointer. That is, in the list head of the previous page we set flags. The list pages are allocated to be aligned such that the lowest significant bits are always zero pointing to the list. This gives us play to put in flags to their pointers. bit 0: set when the page is a head page bit 1: set when the writer is moving the page (for overwrite mode) cmpxchg is used to update the pointer. When the writer wraps the buffer and the tail meets the head, in overwrite mode, the writer must move the head page forward. It first uses cmpxchg to change the pointer flag from 1 to 2. Once this is done, the reader on another CPU will not take the page from the buffer. The writers need to protect against interrupts (we don't bother with disabling interrupts because NMIs are allowed to write too). After the writer sets the pointer flag to 2, it takes care to manage interrupts coming in. This is discribed in detail within the comments of the code. Changes in version 2: - Let reader reset entries value of header page. - Fix tail page passing commit page on reader page test. - Always increment entries and write counter in rb_tail_page_update - Add safety check in rb_set_commit_to_write to break out of infinite loop - add mask in rb_is_reader_page [ Impact: lock free writing to the ring buffer ] Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt

trace: annotate bitfields in struct ring_buffer_event

2009-06-15T13:49:37Z

This gets rid of a heap of false-positive warnings from the tracer code due to the use of bitfields. [rebased for mainline inclusion] Signed-off-by: Vegard Nossum