Re: [PATCH 0/5] rtla/timerlat: Stop on signal properly when overloaded

[Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>]

On Fri, 17 Jan 2025 13:04:07 +0100
Tomas Glozar <tglozar@redhat.com> wrote:


> I was thinking of turning timerlat_hist_handler/timerlat_top_handler
> into a BPF program and having it executed right after the sample is
> created, e.g. by using the BPF perf interface to hook it to a
> tracepoint event. The histogram/counter would be stored in BPF maps,
> which would be merely copied over in the main loop. This is
> essentially how cyclictest does it, except in userspace. I expect this
> solution to have good performance, but the obvious downside is that it
> requires BPF. This is not a problem for us, but might be for other
> rtla users and we'd likely have to keep both implementations of sample
> processing in the code.
> 
> Also, before even starting with that, it would be likely necessary to
> remove the duplicate code throughout timerlat/osnoise and test it
> properly, so we don't have to do the same code changes twice or four
> times.

We could also add kernel helpers to the code if it would help.

Hmm, the timerlat event could probably get access to a trigger to allow it
to do the work in the kernel like what the 'hist' triggers do. We can
extend on that.

The reason I haven't written a BPF program yet, is because when I feel
there's a useful operation that can be done, I just extend ftrace to do it
;-)

-- Steve