Re: RFC: android logger feedback request

[john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>]

On Wed, 2011-12-21 at 16:42 -0800, Tim Bird wrote:
> On 12/21/2011 04:18 PM, john stultz wrote:
> > On Wed, 2011-12-21 at 15:19 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> >> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 02:59:15PM -0800, Tim Bird wrote:
> >>> Hi all,
> >>>
> >>> I'm looking for feedback on the Android logger code, to see what
> >>> it would take to make this code acceptable for inclusion in
> >>> the mainline kernel.
> >>>
> >>> Information about the features of Android logging system
> >>> can be found at: http://elinux.org/Android_Logging_System
> >>>
> >>> This system creates a new system-wide logging service, in
> >>> the kernel, for user-space message.  It is more comparable
> >>> to syslog than to the kernel log buffer, as it holds only
> >>> user-space messages.  It is optimized for write
> >>> performance, since most of the time the log is written to
> >>> and never read.  It creates multiple log channels, to prevent
> >>> an abundance of log messages in one channel from overwriting
> >>> messages in another channel.  The log channels have sizes
> >>> fixed at kernel compile-time.
> >>>
> >>> Log messages are stored in very simple in-kernel buffers, that
> >>> overflow old messages upon wrapping.  A fixed set of attributes
> >>> (pid, tid, timestamp and message), is kept for each message.
> >>> By convention, Android puts a message priority and context tag
> >>> into each message.
> >>>
> >>> In Android, this system uses a fixed set of device nodes with
> >>> well-known names: /dev/log/main, /dev/log/events, /dev/log/radio
> >>> and /dev/log/system.
> >>>
> >>> Operations on the log are done via a character device, using
> >>> standard file operations and some ioctls.
> >>>
> >>> The code for this is below (I've moved it from linux-next
> >>> drivers/staging/android for my own testing).
> >>>
> >>> Please let me know what issues you see with this code.
> >>
> >> That all describes the current code, but you haven't described what's
> >> wrong with the existing syslog interface that requires this new driver
> >> to be written.  And why can't the existing interface be fixed to address
> >> these (potential) shortcomings?
> >>
> >>> One specific question I have is where is the most appropriate
> >>> place for this code to live, in the kernel source tree?
> >>> Other embedded systems might want to use this system (it
> >>> is simpler than syslog, and superior in some ways), so I don't
> >>> think it should remain in an android-specific directory.
> >>
> >> What way is it superior?  Again, why not extend syslog?  Why not "fix"
> >> syslog if this really is a superior thing?  How does this tie into Kay
> >> and Lennard's proposal for work in this area?
> > 
> > There is also some overlap functionality wise with pstore as well, as I
> > believe the logger is used as a known location in memory where messages
> > can be fetched from after a kernel panic or crash.
> 
> I don't know if that's true or not.  I think you may be thinking
> of Android's RAM console feature.  If there's a way to save
> application messages over a reboot using the logger buffers, I'm
> unfamiliar with it.

I may very well be confusing things. I had thought apanic pulled the
logger data, but maybe I'm wrong.

thanks
-john