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Subject: Re: [PATCH] tracing/lockdep: turn lock->name into an array
From: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
To: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com>,
       Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>,
       Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>, Zhaolei <zhaolei@cn.fujitsu.com>,
       Tom Zanussi <tzanussi@gmail.com>, Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>,
       LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:20:11 +0200
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On Tue, 2009-04-14 at 08:53 +0200, Ingo Molnar wrote:
> * KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@jp.fujitsu.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi
> > 
> > > Impact: allow filtering by lock name / fix module tracing
> > > 
> > > Currently, the "lock acquired" event is traced using a TRACE_EVENT.
> > > But we can't use the char * type for the name without risking to
> > > dereference a freed pointer. A lock name can come from a module
> > > towards lockdep and it is risky to only store its address because we
> > > defer its name printing.
> > 
> > When released lockdep string table? I guess it only happend at 
> > module unloading. if so, we should consider to make delayed string 
> > table freeing at module unloading.
> > 
> > My point is, module unloading is rare event. thus meking pointer 
> > safe mechanism widely avoid string copy.
> > 
> > IOW, if not, ringbuffer is filled tons string. it kill the merit 
> > of binary buffer and current design.
> 
> We could zap all pending trace entries on module unload (it is a 
> rare operation). That would indeed make a whole category of 
> symbol-alike string pointers safe to be passed by value.

Except that might make debugging a module unload bug rather hard...