Re: [RFC PATCH v4 0/9] printk: new ringbuffer implementation

Sergey Senozhatsky
2019-09-06T13:44:46Z

On (09/06/19 12:49), Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 06, 2019 at 07:09:43PM +0900, Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
>
> > ---
> > diff --git a/kernel/printk/printk_safe.c b/kernel/printk/printk_safe.c
> > index 139c310049b1..9c73eb6259ce 100644
> > --- a/kernel/printk/printk_safe.c
> > +++ b/kernel/printk/printk_safe.c
> > @@ -103,7 +103,10 @@ static __printf(2, 0) int printk_safe_log_store(struct printk_safe_seq_buf *s,
> > if (atomic_cmpxchg(&s->len, len, len + add) != len)
> > goto again;
> >
> > - queue_flush_work(s);
> > + if (early_console)
> > + early_console->write(early_console, s->buffer + len, add);
> > + else
> > + queue_flush_work(s);
> > return add;
> > }
>
> You've not been following along, that generates absolutely unreadable
> garbage.

This was more of a joke/reference to "Those NMI buffers are a trainwreck
and need to die a horrible death". Of course this needs a re-entrant cpu
lock to serialize access to atomic/early consoles. But here is one more
missing thing - we need atomic/early consoles on a separate, sort of
immutable, list. And probably forbid any modifications of such console
drivers, (PM, etc.) If we can do this then we don't need to take console_sem
while we iterate that list, which removes sched/timekeeping locks out
of the fast printk() path.

We, at the same time, don't have that many options on systems without
atomic/early consoles. Move printing to NMI (e.g. up to X pending logbug
lines per NMI)? Move printing to IPI (again, up to X pending logbuf lines
per IPI)? printk() softirqs?

-ss