Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] mm, printk: introduce new format string for flags

Joonsoo Kim
2015-12-10T04:44:45Z

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 11:04:56PM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 10, 2015 at 11:59:44AM +0900, Joonsoo Kim wrote:
> > Ccing, Steven to ask trace-cmd problem.
>
> Thanks, I should have been Cc'd for the rest as well.
>
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 04, 2015 at 04:16:33PM +0100, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> > > In mm we use several kinds of flags bitfields that are sometimes printed for
> > > debugging purposes, or exported to userspace via sysfs. To make them easier to
> > > interpret independently on kernel version and config, we want to dump also the
> > > symbolic flag names. So far this has been done with repeated calls to
> > > pr_cont(), which is unreliable on SMP, and not usable for e.g. sysfs export.
> > >
> > > To get a more reliable and universal solution, this patch extends printk()
> > > format string for pointers to handle the page flags (%pgp), gfp_flags (%pgg)
> > > and vma flags (%pgv). Existing users of dump_flag_names() are converted and
> > > simplified.
> > >
> > > It would be possible to pass flags by value instead of pointer, but the %p
> > > format string for pointers already has extensions for various kernel
> > > structures, so it's a good fit, and the extra indirection in a non-critical
> > > path is negligible.
> >
> > I'd like to use %pgp in tracepoint output. It works well when I do
> > 'cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace' but not works well when I do
> > './trace-cmd report'. It prints following error log.
> >
> > [page_ref:page_ref_unfreeze] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_set] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_mod_unless] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_mod_and_test] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_mod_and_return] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_mod] bad op token &
> > [page_ref:page_ref_freeze] bad op token &
> >
> > Following is the format I used.
> >
> > TP_printk("pfn=0x%lx flags=%pgp count=%d mapcount=%d mapping=%p mt=%d val=%d ret=%d",
> > __entry->pfn, &__entry->flags, __entry->count,
> > __entry->mapcount, __entry->mapping, __entry->mt,
> > __entry->val, __entry->ret)
> >
> > Could it be solved by 'trace-cmd' itself?
> > Or it's better to pass flags by value?
> > Or should I use something like show_gfp_flags()?
>
> Yes this can be solved in perf and trace-cmd via the parse-events.c file. And
> as soon as that happens, whatever method we decide upon becomes a userspace
> ABI. So don't think you can change it later.

Okay. Because it can be solved by perf and trace-cmd via the
parse-events.c, I have no preference whether it is passed by value or
not.

Thanks.