Re: [REGRESSION] x86, perf: counter freezing breaks rr

Andi Kleen
2018-11-20T19:42:01Z

> rr, a userspace record and replay debugger[0], uses the PMU interrupt
> (PMI) to stop a program during replay to inject asynchronous events
> such as signals. With perf counter freezing enabled we are reliably
> seeing perf event overcounts during replay. This behavior is easily

It's hard to see how it could over count since the PMU freezes
earlier than the PMI with freezing. So it should count less.
Did you mean under count?

> Given that we're already at rc3, and that this renders rr unusable,
> we'd ask that counter freezing be disabled for the 4.20 release.

The boot option should be good enough for the release?

A reasonable future option would be to expose an option to disable it in
the perf_event. Then rr could set it.

-Andi