Re: [Qemu-devel] [RFC PATCH 1/2] ivring: Add a ring-buffer driver on IVShmem

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, Jun 06, 2012 at 07:03:06AM +0800, Anthony Liguori wrote:
> On 06/05/2012 09:10 PM, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> >On Tue, Jun 05, 2012 at 10:01:17PM +0900, Yoshihiro YUNOMAE wrote:
> >>This patch adds a ring-buffer driver for IVShmem device, a virtual RAM device in
> >>QEMU. This driver can be used as a ring-buffer for kernel logging or tracing of
> >>a guest OS by recording kernel programing or SystemTap.
> >>
> >>This ring-buffer driver is implemented very simple. First 4kB of shared memory
> >>region is control structure of a ring-buffer. In this region, some values for
> >>managing the ring-buffer is stored such as bits and mask of whole memory size,
> >>writing position, threshold value for notification to a reader on a host OS.
> >>This region is used by the reader to know writing position. Then, "total
> >>memory size - 4kB" equals to usable memory region for recording data.
> >>This ring-buffer driver records any data from start to end of the writable
> >>memory region.
> >>
> >>When writing size exceeds a threshold value, this driver can notify a reader
> >>to read data by using writel(). As this later patch, reader does not have any
> >>function for receiving the notification. This notification feature will be used
> >>near the future.
> >>
> >>As a writer records data in this ring-buffer, spinlock function is used to
> >>avoid competing by some writers in multi CPU environment. Not to use spinlock,
> >>lockless ring-buffer like as ftrace and one ring-buffer one CPU will be
> >>implemented near the future.
> >
> >Yet another ring buffer?
> >
> >We already have an ftrace and perf ring buffer, can't you use one of those?
> 
> Not to mention virtio :-)
> 
> Why not just make a virtio device for this kind of thing?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, why reinvent things again?

greg k-h