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Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:07:49 +0000
From: Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@arm.linux.org.uk>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>, "Jon Medhurst (Tixy)" <tixy@linaro.org>,
        Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] ARM: ftrace: Ensure code modifications are
	synchronised across all cpus
Message-ID: <20121210140749.GM14363@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk>
References: <1354894134.17101.44.camel@gandalf.local.home> <20121207162346.GW14363@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk> <1354898200.17101.50.camel@gandalf.local.home> <20121207164530.GX14363@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk> <1354900436.17101.58.camel@gandalf.local.home> <1354902347.8263.12.camel@linaro1.home> <20121210100433.GB6624@mudshark.cambridge.arm.com> <1355144537.17101.155.camel@gandalf.local.home> <20121210135747.GK14363@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk> <1355148365.17101.168.camel@gandalf.local.home>
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On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 09:06:05AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-12-10 at 13:57 +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 08:02:17AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> > > On Mon, 2012-12-10 at 10:04 +0000, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > > Yes, and I think if you do use two 16-bit nops, you can even get rid of all
> > > > the intermediate `sync' operations (I guess you might want one at the end if
> > > > you want the call to become visible at a particular point).
> > > 
> > > Wont work. We are replacing a 32bit call with a nop. That nop must also
> > > be 32bits, because we could eventually replace the nop(s) with a 32bit
> > > call.
> > 
> > ... which, if it's misaligned to a 32-bit boundary, which can happen with
> > Thumb-2 code, will require the replacement to be done atomically; you will
> > need to use stop_machine() to ensure that other CPUs don't try to execute
> > the instruction mid-way through modification... as I have already
> > explained in my previous mails.
> 
> If there's no way to modify a 32bit operation without stop_machine(),
> ever with a breakpoint, than we can stop the discussion here. ARM will
> forever require stop_machine() for use with tracepoints and ftrace. Too
> bad, as ARM was the x86 competitor. Here's something that x86 has a one
> up on ARM.

You think that kind of blackmail makes a difference?  Look closely at what
I've written - I didn't say that there's no way to modify any 32-bit
operation without stop_machine().