[PATCH v3 4/4] Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt: add tests suite appendix

Juri Lelli
2014-08-28T10:00:35Z

Add an appendix briefly describing tools that can be used to test SCHED_DEADLINE
(and the scheduler in general). Links to where source code of the tools is hosted
are also provided.

Signed-off-by: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@arm.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Henrik Austad <henrik@austad.us>
Cc: Dario Faggioli <raistlin@linux.it>
Cc: Juri Lelli <juri.lelli@gmail.com>
Cc: linux-doc@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
---
Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt | 52 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 52 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
index 641395e..2f5b174 100644
--- a/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
+++ b/Documentation/scheduler/sched-deadline.txt
@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ CONTENTS
5. Tasks CPU affinity
5.1 SCHED_DEADLINE and cpusets HOWTO
6. Future plans
+ A. Test suite

0. WARNING
@@ -341,3 +342,54 @@ CONTENTS
throttling patches [https://lkml.org/lkml/2010/2/23/239] but we still are in
the preliminary phases of the merge and we really seek feedback that would
help us decide on the direction it should take.
+
+Appendix A. Test suite
+======================
+
+ The SCHED_DEADLINE policy can be easily tested using two applications that
+ are part of a wider Linux Scheduler validation suite. The suite is
+ available as a GitHub repository: https://github.com/scheduler-tools.
+
+ The first testing application is called rt-app and can be used to
+ start multiple threads with specific parameters. rt-app supports
+ SCHED_{OTHER,FIFO,RR,DEADLINE} scheduling policies and their related
+ parameters (e.g., niceness, priority, runtime/deadline/period). rt-app
+ is a valuable tool, as it can be used to synthetically recreate certain
+ workloads (maybe mimicking real use-cases) and evaluate how the scheduler
+ behaves under such workloads. In this way, results are easily reproducible.
+ rt-app is available at: https://github.com/scheduler-tools/rt-app.
+
+ Thread parameters can be specified from the command line, with something like
+ this:
+
+ # rt-app -t 100000:10000:d -t 150000:20000:f:10 -D5
+
+ The above creates two threads. The first one, scheduled by SCHED_DEADLINE,
+ executes for 10ms every 100ms and the second one, scheduled at RT priority 10
+ with SCHED_FIFO, executes for 20ms every 150ms. The configuration runs
+ for 5 seconds.
+
+ More interestingly, configurations can be described with a json file that
+ can be passed as input to rt-app with something like this:
+
+ # rt-app my_config.json
+
+ The parameters that can be specified with the second method are a superset
+ of the command line options. Please refer to rt-app documentation for more
+ details.
+
+ The second testing application is a modification of schedtool, called
+ schedtool-dl, which can be used to setup SCHED_DEADLINE parameters for a
+ certain pid/application. schedtool-dl is available at:
+ https://github.com/scheduler-tools/schedtool-dl.git.
+
+ The usage is straightforward:
+
+ # schedtool -E -t 10000000:100000000 -e ./my_cpuhog_app
+
+ With this, my_cpuhog_app is put to run inside a SCHED_DEADLINE reservation
+ of 10ms every 100ms (note that parameters are expressed in microseconds).
+ You can also use schedtool to create a reservation for an already running
+ application, given that you know its pid:
+
+ # schedtool -E -t 10000000:100000000 my_app_pid
--
2.0.4