Re: [PATCH v7 1/4] ftrace: Implement fs notification for tracing_max_latency

Steven Rostedt
2019-10-02T15:13:31Z

On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 17:22:16 +0200
"Viktor Rosendahl (BMW)" <viktor.rosendahl@gmail.com> wrote:

> This patch implements the feature that the tracing_max_latency file,
> e.g. /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/tracing_max_latency will receive
> notifications through the fsnotify framework when a new latency is
> available.
>
> One particularly interesting use of this facility is when enabling
> threshold tracing, through /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/tracing_thresh,
> together with the preempt/irqsoff tracers. This makes it possible to
> implement a user space program that can, with equal probability,
> obtain traces of latencies that occur immediately after each other in
> spite of the fact that the preempt/irqsoff tracers operate in overwrite
> mode.
>
> This facility works with the hwlat, preempt/irqsoff, and wakeup
> tracers.
>
> The tracers may call the latency_fsnotify() from places such as
> __schedule() or do_idle(); this makes it impossible to call
> queue_work() directly without risking a deadlock. The same would
> happen with a softirq, kernel thread or tasklet. For this reason we
> use the irq_work mechanism to call queue_work().

Can fsnotify() be called from irq context? If so, why have the work
queue at all? Just do the work from the irq_work handler.

-- Steve

>
> This patch creates a new workqueue. The reason for doing this is that
> I wanted to use the WQ_UNBOUND and WQ_HIGHPRI flags. My thinking was
> that WQ_UNBOUND might help with the latency in some important cases.
>
> If we use:
>
> queue_work(system_highpri_wq, &tr->fsnotify_work);
>
> then the work will (almost) always execute on the same CPU but if we are
> unlucky that CPU could be too busy while there could be another CPU in
> the system that would be able to process the work soon enough.
>
> queue_work_on() could be used to queue the work on another CPU but it
> seems difficult to select the right CPU.
>