Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:01:14 +0300 | From | Pekka Paalanen <> | Subject | Re: Tracing/ftrace: trouble with trace_entries and trace_pipe |
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On Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:14:34 -0400 (EDT) Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Pekka Paalanen wrote: > > > Hi Steven and others, > > > > first a minor bug: it seems the units of /debug/tracing/trace_entries > > is different for read and write. This is confusing for the users, since > > I can't say "if you have problems, double it". If I read from it > > something like 16422, then write back 16422, next I read 214. I can't > > recall the exact numbers, but the difference really is two orders of > > magnitude. I have 1 GB RAM in this box, so that shouldn't be an issue. > > You write to it the same number that you read from and it returned > something different?? That is indeed a bug, since it should definitely > detect that. Is this linux-tip? I'll have to play with it to make sure > nothing broke it recently. > > I just tried the latest mainline, and it seemed to work there.
Yes, it returned a very different number. This is Ingo's tip/master, sorry for not being explicit. Checked-out on Sunday.
Echoing the following numbers to trace_entries triggers it: 200, 64, 640, 16422, 16422, 16422, 164220... so the ridiculously small number 64 does something bad. After 640, I read back something less than 200. Each following write increases that number by 46. 16422 is the default before writing anything. That is even stranger than I thought. :-o
I was going to test the buffer overflow with mmiotrace.
> > My other problem is with trace_pipe. It is again making 'cat' quit too > > early. The condition triggered is > > if (!tracer_enabled && iter->pos) { > > in tracing_read_pipe(), and it is followed by triggering > > /* stop when tracing is finished */ > > if (trace_empty(iter)) { > > and then sret=0, so read returns 0 and 'cat' exits. > > > > Now, I am trying my mmiotrace marker patches, but as far as I can tell, > > nothing I modified is the reason for this. I didn't yet explicitly test > > for it, though. I'll send these patches after I hear from Frederic. > > > > The cat-quit problem is not a constant state. After boot, I could play > > with my markers and testmmiotrace without cat quitting. Then something > > happens, and cat starts the quitting behaviour, and won't get to normal > > by disabling and enabling mmiotrace. > > > > I have a couple of wild guesses of what might be related: > > - ring buffer wrap-around > > - ring buffer overflow (at first try I hit these, the second try > > after putting debug-pr_info's in place I don't hit this) > > - ring buffer resize (after playing with trace_entries, cat-quit > > problem was present, though it might have been present before) > > > > After viewing the git history, I have some more guesses, mainly > > related to setting tracer_enabled to 0. > > - commit 2b1bce1787700768cbc87c8509851c6f49d252dc > > I don't see where tracer_enabled would be set to 1, when > > mmiotrace is enabled. It used to default to 1 and mmiotrace was happy. > > - __tracing_open() sets it to 0 (not called for the pipe) > > - tracing_release() sets it to 1 > > - tracing_ctrl_write() toggles it > > - tracing_read_pipe() tests it > > - tracer_alloc_buffers() uses it > > And other tracers seem to use it a lot. > > > > Mmiotrace does use the tracer::ctrl_update hook, and allow/disallow > > calls to __trace_mmiotrace_{rw,map}() via enabling/disabling the whole > > mmiotrace core. Is this not enough, or is it inappropriate? > > > > It seems tracer_enabled is used by the trace framework itself to > > enable/disable... what? Hmm, maybe nothing I care about. > > > > Should mmiotrace simply do > > tracer_enabled = 1; > > in mmio_trace_init()? > > > > Should mmiotrace test tracer_enabled, and if so, when? > > No, tracer_enabled is something that is internal to the tracer > infrastructure. > > if you read from either tracing/trace or tracing/latency_trace it will > disable the tracer while you dump. But you should not be doing that. The > trace_pipe should not disable that either.
Ok, so the problem is probably the commit I mentioned. It makes the no_tracer tracer to set tracer_enabled to 0, and I can't find where it would be set to 1 for mmiotrace. And this interferes with tracing_read_pipe(), making it quit when iter->pos is non-zero. See no_trace_init() in trace.c. According to this, the cat-quit occurs when the buffer gets empty after first data, but this isn't totally in agreement with what I recall from my experiments. And it does happen also on other times than injecting markers.
So either it is wrong to check tracer_enabled in tracing_read_pipe(), or no_trace_init() should not touch it.
Steven, what do you think?
-- Pekka Paalanen http://www.iki.fi/pq/
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