Re: [PATCH 5/5] ring-buffer: fix printk output

[Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:45:46 +0200
Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:

> 
> * Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:56:25 +0200 Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > > > My larger point remains, about possibly embedding linux-next 
> > > > > into lkml. I couldnt think of a single linux-next mail that isnt 
> > > > > relevant to lkml. It's all about commits that are destined for 
> > > > > upstream in 0-2.5 months.
> > > > 
> > > > Sure, I'd be OK with zapping the linux-next list.
> > > 
> > > Another, less drastic solution would be to keep it as an _alias_ 
> > > list. All mails posted to it also go to lkml, but it would still be 
> > > subscribe-able separately.
> > 
> > That would work, although I wonder about the potential for 
> > duplicates turning up somewhere.
> 
> The potential for duplicates is inherent in Cc: lines to begin with.

But if someone does reply-to-all to linux-next and linux-kernel, and
the linux-next email gets redirected to linux-kernel, badness might
happen.  Bearing in mind the screwiness of the mail clients whcih some
people use..

> > > ( This has come up before and this would be useful for a number of 
> > >   other things - such as tracing/instrumentation. Someone who is 
> > >   only interested in instrumentation related discussions could 
> > >   subscribe to that list. )
> > > 
> > > > > > printk_once() is racy on smp and preempt btw ;)
> > > > > 
> > > > > Like WARN_ONCE() and WARN_ON_ONCE(). It's really an "oh crap" 
> > > > > facility, not for normal kernel messages.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Do we want to complicate them with locking and preemption - or 
> > > > > should we just concentrate on getting the "oh crap" message out 
> > > > > to the syslog (before it's possibly too late to get anything 
> > > > > out)?
> > > > > 
> > > > > I have no strong opinion about it - but i tend to like the 
> > > > > simpler method most. printk + stack dumps themselves arent 
> > > > > atomic to begin with.
> > > > 
> > > > Well, it's hardly likely to be a problem.  otoh, if two CPUs _do_ 
> > > > hit the thing at the same time, the resulting output will be all 
> > > > messed up and we'd really like to see it.
> > > > 
> > > > Easily fixed with test_and_set_bit()?
> > > 
> > > but if two CPUs hit it at once then the printk+stack-dump itself is 
> > > already mixed up. So if we do any atomicity it should be done for 
> > > all the print-once APIs. (note, lockdep does such message-atomicity 
> > > already, in its own facility)
> > 
> > Confused.
> > 
> > <gets distracted by FW_BUG and friends.  ytf are they in kernel.h?>
> > 
> > #define printk_once(x...) ({				\
> > 	static unsigned long __print_once;		\
> > 							\
> 
> hm, this doubles the flag size on 32-bit kernels.

Well yeah.  I was wondering whether __print_once should be a char
anyway.  Will that hurt text size on any arch?  Will gcc dtrt with such
things?  It might go and 4-byte align the chars anwyay.