Re: [PATCH 2/5] ftrace: infrastructure for supporting binary record

[Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@redhat.com>]

Em Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 08:28:03PM +0100, Frédéric Weisbecker escreveu:
> 2009/1/2 Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@ghostprotocols.net>:
> >
> > warning: I haven't looked at the patch details
> >
> > But I would love to use something like this to provide the exact
> > contents the userspace blktrace utilities want.
> >
> > - Arnaldo
> >
> 
> 
> Hi Arnaldo,
 
> Since you talked about binary record for the blk tracer, I just recall
> this patch.  Are you sure this infrastructure would cover your needs?

Nope, now that I look at it it definetely isn't what I need. See? the
warning was valid after all :-)

What I want and will experiment now is to almost dump the contents of
the ring buffer as-is to userspace. I want that so that I can use
blkparse to validate the ring buffer + blkFtrace routines produced
buffer.

So probably it will be a matter of using trace_iter to signal that, and
when it gets to my print_line routine I just put together the initial
trace format expected by blkparse + the ones I'm collecting at
tracepoint time.
 
> >From your traced site, trace_vbprintk will carry your random typed
> datas in a binary-contiguous way.
> But actually, its purpose is more about holding binary data transport
> to finally print them in a formatted string
> output, as usual.
> 
> You can compare it with ftrace_printk, since the result is the same.
> The difference is in the transport.
> ftrace_printk will carry your data as already formatted whereas
> trace_vbprintk will carry them as binary values and format them
> in the last moment. On most cases, trace_vbprintk would be logically
> more lightweight.

Understood, but I already do this, and then leave it to the last minute
to look at the blktrace types:

+static enum print_line_t blk_tracer_print_line(struct trace_iterator *iter)
+{
+       struct trace_seq *s = &iter->seq;
+       struct blk_io_trace *t = (struct blk_io_trace *)iter->ent;
+       const u16 what = t->action & ((1 << BLK_TC_SHIFT) - 1);
+       int ret;
+
+       switch (what) {
+       case __BLK_TA_ISSUE:        ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "D"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_INSERT:       ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "I"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_QUEUE:        ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "Q"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_BOUNCE:       ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "B"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_BACKMERGE:    ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "M"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_FRONTMERGE:   ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "F"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_GETRQ:        ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "G"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_SLEEPRQ:      ret = blk_log_generic(iter, t, "S"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_REQUEUE:      ret = blk_log_with_err(iter, t, "R"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_COMPLETE:     ret = blk_log_with_err(iter, t, "C"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_PLUG:         ret = blk_log_plug(iter, t); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_UNPLUG_IO:    ret = blk_log_unplug(iter, t, "U"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_UNPLUG_TIMER: ret = blk_log_unplug(iter, t, "UT"); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_REMAP:        ret = blk_log_remap(iter, t); break;
+       case __BLK_TA_SPLIT:        ret = blk_log_split(iter, t, "X"); break;

I did this trying to get as close to the existing blktrace record format
as possible, to minimize the current patch.

I guess that the right thing to do is to create a new blktrace record
format, that is:

	struct blk_io_trace {
		struct trace_entry ent;
		<what is not in struct trace_entry already>
	}

And rebuild the userspace blkparse utility.

But I'm still trying to figure out how to best use the ever-improving
ftrace infrastructure.

For instance, now I think that I need to register one event for each of
the case __BLK_TA_ lines above, like kernel/trace/trace_branch.c already
does.

If I do that I can also provide a trace_event->bin that would use
trace_seq_putmem.

> But if you have some predefined typed data to export as binary, I
> think that can't really help you.
> You would prefer to define you own type and then export them as binary
> values with your own output helper function.

Agreed

> Hmm?
> 
> Steven, Ingo, what are your thoughts about this patch?
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