Re: [RFC PATCH 0/3] md: export internal stats through debugfs

[Hou Tao <houtao1@huawei.com>]

Hi,

On 2019/7/23 7:30, Bob Liu wrote:
> On 7/2/19 9:29 PM, Hou Tao wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There are so many io counters, stats and flags in md, so I think
>> export these info to userspace will be helpful for online-debugging,
> 
> For online-debugging, I'd suggest you have a try eBPF which can be very helpful.
> 

Thanks for your suggestion. Using an eBPF program to read these internal status
from a host which is fully under your control is a good choice, but when
the dependencies of an eBPF program (e.g., the minor version of the kernel
and the kernel configuration which will influence the struct layout) is
out-of-your-control, it's not a good choice.

Thanks,
Tao

> -Bob
> 
>> especially when the vmlinux file and the crash utility are not
>> available. And these info can also be utilized during code
>> understanding.
>>
>> MD has already exported some stats through sysfs files under
>> /sys/block/mdX/md, but using sysfs file to export more internal
>> stats are not a good choice, because we need to create a single
>> sysfs file for each internal stat according to the use convention
>> of sysfs and there are too many internal stats. Further, the
>> newly-created sysfs files would become APIs for userspace tools,
>> but that is not we wanted, because these files are related with
>> internal stats and internal stats may change from time to time.
>>
>> And I think debugfs is a better choice. Because we can show multiple
>> related stats in a debugfs file, and the debugfs file will never be
>> used as an userspace API.
>>
>> Two debugfs files are created to expose these internal stats:
>> * iostat: io counters and io related stats (e.g., mddev->active_io,
>> 	r1conf->nr_pending, or r1confi->retry_list)
>> * stat: normal stats/flags (e.g., mddev->recovery, conf->array_frozen)
>>
>> Because internal stats are spreaded all over md-core and md-personality,
>> so both md-core and md-personality will create these two debugfs files
>> under different debugfs directory.
>>
>> Patch 1 factors out the debugfs files creation routine for md-core and
>> md-personality, patch 2 creates two debugfs files: iostat & stat under
>> /sys/kernel/debug/block/mdX for md-core, and patch 3 creates two debugfs
>> files: iostat & stat under /sys/kernel/debug/block/mdX/raid1 for md-raid1.
>>
>> The following lines show the hierarchy and the content of these debugfs
>> files for a RAID1 device:
>>
>> $ pwd
>> /sys/kernel/debug/block/md0
>> $ tree
>> .
>> ├── iostat
>> ├── raid1
>> │   ├── iostat
>> │   └── stat
>> └── stat
>>
>> $ cat iostat
>> active_io 0
>> sb_wait 0 pending_writes 0
>> recovery_active 0
>> bitmap pending_writes 0
>>
>> $ cat stat
>> flags 0x20
>> sb_flags 0x0
>> recovery 0x0
>>
>> $ cat raid1/iostat
>> retry_list active 0
>> bio_end_io_list active 0
>> pending_bio_list active 0 cnt 0
>> sync_pending 0
>> nr_pending 0
>> nr_waiting 0
>> nr_queued 0
>> barrier 0
>>
>> $ cat raid1/stat
>> array_frozen 0
>>
>> I'm not sure whether the division of internal stats is appropriate and
>> whether the internal stats in debugfs files are sufficient, so questions
>> and comments are weclome.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Tao
>>
>> Hou Tao (3):
>>   md-debugfs: add md_debugfs_create_files()
>>   md: export inflight io counters and internal stats in debugfs
>>   raid1: export inflight io counters and internal stats in debugfs
>>
>>  drivers/md/Makefile     |  2 +-
>>  drivers/md/md-debugfs.c | 35 ++++++++++++++++++
>>  drivers/md/md-debugfs.h | 16 +++++++++
>>  drivers/md/md.c         | 65 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  drivers/md/md.h         |  1 +
>>  drivers/md/raid1.c      | 78 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>>  drivers/md/raid1.h      |  1 +
>>  7 files changed, 197 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>>  create mode 100644 drivers/md/md-debugfs.c
>>  create mode 100644 drivers/md/md-debugfs.h
>>
> 
> 
> .
>