From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: daniel.lezcano@linaro.org (Daniel Lezcano) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 16:44:20 +0200 Subject: [RFC PATCH] clocksource: arm_arch_timer: disable the evtstrm via the cmdline In-Reply-To: <20160620133002.GB20071@e104818-lin.cambridge.arm.com> References: <1466171011-30468-1-git-send-email-will.deacon@arm.com> <5766FBC6.6000405@linaro.org> <20160620082157.GC29165@arm.com> <5767E89F.5020809@linaro.org> <20160620133002.GB20071@e104818-lin.cambridge.arm.com> Message-ID: <57713BC4.5040909@linaro.org> To: linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org List-Id: linux-arm-kernel.lists.infradead.org On 06/20/2016 03:30 PM, Catalin Marinas wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 02:59:11PM +0200, Daniel Lezcano wrote: >> On 06/20/2016 10:21 AM, Will Deacon wrote: >>> On Sun, Jun 19, 2016 at 10:08:38PM +0200, Daniel Lezcano wrote: >>>> On 06/17/2016 03:43 PM, Will Deacon wrote: >>>> >>>> [ Cc'ed tglx ] >>>> >>>>> Disabling the eventstream can be useful for debugging and development >>>>> purposes >>>> >>>> If it is for debugging and development, why upstream this change ? >>> >>> Mainly because it's desirable to be able to debug systems remotely, on >>> machines that you don't have direct access to and where recompiling the >>> kernel isn't necessarily an option. There are plenty of "no*" kernel >>> parameters already that fall into a similar category. >> >> if the kernel is in development and debug, why this option can't be part of >> debugging code ? > > Because we may actually be debugging the hardware rather than the > software. With the event stream enabled, WFE is woken up periodically. > This can be a handy feature for user locking primitives or a simple > workaround for hardware bugs (and we've seen them before). But the side > effect is that it may be potentially hiding hardware issues. > > For hardware testing/validation, you'd want to sometimes disable this > feature to check whether your event generation (usually as a result of > exclusive monitor clearing) is working as expected. It's much easier to > do with a command line option. > >> I'm not a big fan of the all the specific driver options for the kernel >> parameters. If there is a real need to disable some parts of a driver, it >> would be much more interesting to write a framework for that and then use it >> from arm_arch_timer, thus giving the other drivers the opportunity to >> provide the same feature. > > Well, how many non-ARM timer drivers have an exclusive monitor event > stream feature to make sense for a framework? Ok. What about an option like: clocksource.arch_arm.evtstream = 0/1 -- Linaro.org ? Open source software for ARM SoCs Follow Linaro: Facebook | Twitter | Blog