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Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2011 09:33:44 -0800
From: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
To: Daniel Baluta <dbaluta@ixiacom.com>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        netdev@vger.kernel.org, adobriyan@gmail.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kref: add function for reading kref value
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On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 06:42:59PM +0200, Daniel Baluta wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Le lundi 12 décembre 2011 à 17:39 +0200, Daniel Baluta a écrit :
> >
> >> Ok, for the moment it seems to be a bad idea. But my intention is
> >> to integrate kref to networking code, and then to write a general
> >> debugging tool for refs.
> >>
> >> Tracking down reference count problems is hard, and this tool can
> >> really help everyone.
> >
> > I dont think kref will help you that much, because its used everywhere.
> >
> > Adding a general debugging tool will provide too much noise.
> >
> > Instead, we (network dev) add debugging points where we want.
> 
> Yes, but you have to do this each time you start debugging, for a
> particular referenced counted object.
> 
> We must find a clever solution to avoid the noise. (e.g use
> /proc, /sysfs, /debugfs options to trigger dumping info for
> some/all objects with a certain state).

Then use the dynamic debug infrastructure, which is there to help you
try to handle this type of debugging on-the-fly.

But again, it's not a kref issue, sorry.

greg k-h