Re: [PATCH 2/3] printk: Add %ptc to safely print a task's comm

Joe Perches
2011-05-17T21:52:32Z

On Tue, 2011-05-17 at 23:42 +0200, Jiri Slaby wrote:
> On 05/17/2011 10:47 PM, John Stultz wrote:
> > Accessing task->comm requires proper locking. However in the past
> > access to current->comm could be done without locking. This
> > is no longer the case, so all comm access needs to be done
> > while holding the comm_lock.
> > +static noinline_for_stack
> I still fail to see why this should be slowed down by noinlining it.
> Care to explain?

Any vsprintf is slow.

> With my setup, the code below inlined will use 32 bytes of stack. The
> same as %pK case. Uninlined it obviously eats "only" 8 bytes for IP.

The idea is to avoid excess stack consumption for things like:

struct va_format vaf;

const char *fmt = "some format with %ptc";

vaf.fmt = fmt;
vaf.va = &va_list;

printk("some format with %pV\n", &vaf);

> > +char *task_comm_string(char *buf, char *end, void *addr,
> > + struct printf_spec spec, const char *fmt)
> > +{
> > + struct task_struct *tsk = addr;
> > + char *ret;
> > + unsigned long flags;
> > +
> > + spin_lock_irqsave(&tsk->comm_lock, flags);
> > + ret = string(buf, end, tsk->comm, spec);
> > + spin_unlock_irqrestore(&tsk->comm_lock, flags);
> > +
> > + return ret;
> > +}

I think it was more of a problem when "4k stacks" was the default
than today, but I think it is still "good form".