Re: [Lse-tech] Re: A common layer for Accounting packages

[Jay Lan <jlan@sgi.com>]

Guillaume Thouvenin wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 17:16 -0800, Andrew Morton wrote:
> 
>>Jay Lan <jlan@sgi.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Since the need of Linux system accounting has gone beyond what BSD
>>>accounting provides, i think it is a good idea to create a thin layer
>>>of common code for various accounting packages, such as BSD accounting,
>>>CSA, ELSA, etc. The hook to do_exit() at exit.c was changed to invoke
>>>a routine in the common code which would then invoke those accounting
>>>packages that register to the acct_common to handle do_exit situation.
>>
>>This all seems to be heading in the wrong direction.  Do we really want to
>>have lots of different system accounting packages all hooking into a
>>generic we-cant-decide-what-to-do-so-we-added-some-pointless-overhead
>>framework?
>>
>>Can't we get _one_ accounting system in there, get it right, avoid the
>>framework?
> 
> 
>   Is it possible to just merge the BSD accounting and the CSA accounting
> by adding in the current BSD per-process accounting structure some
> missing fields like the mm integral provided by the CSA patch?

Hi Guillaume,

All raw data CSA needs already stored in task_struct of the process.

> 
> ELSA is just a user of the accounting data. We need a hook in the
> do_fork() routine to manage group of processes, not to do accounting.

I see at least three layers of functions in doing system accounting:
data collection, handling of the raw data, and presentation of the
data to users.

We have merged the data collection part. :)

Handling of the raw data seems done in ELSA by user spaced daemon
and you are proposing to add a hook at fork time. I am interested
in learning your approach. How ELSA adds per process accounting data
to your grouping (banks) when a process exit? How do you save
accounting data you need in task_struct before it is disposed? BSD
handles that through acct_process() hook at do_exit(). CSA also
depends on a hook at do_exit() to merge per-process data to per-job
data. How does ELSA handle this without a need of a do_exit() hook?

Thanks,
  - jay

> 
> Guillaume
> 
> 
> 
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