1cc33161a8
Userspace Statically Defined Tracepoints[1] are dtrace style markers
inside userspace applications. Applications like PostgreSQL, MySQL,
Pthread, Perl, Python, Java, Ruby, Node.js, libvirt, QEMU, glib etc
have these markers embedded in them. These markers are added by developer
at important places in the code. Each marker source expands to a single
nop instruction in the compiled code but there may be additional
overhead for computing the marker arguments which expands to couple of
instructions. In case the overhead is more, execution of it can be
omitted by runtime if() condition when no one is tracing on the marker:
if (reference_counter > 0) {
Execute marker instructions;
}
Default value of reference counter is 0. Tracer has to increment the
reference counter before tracing on a marker and decrement it when
done with the tracing.
Implement the reference counter logic in core uprobe. User will be
able to use it from trace_uprobe as well as from kernel module. New
trace_uprobe definition with reference counter will now be:
<path>:<offset>[(ref_ctr_offset)]
where ref_ctr_offset is an optional field. For kernel module, new
variant of uprobe_register() has been introduced:
uprobe_register_refctr(inode, offset, ref_ctr_offset, consumer)
No new variant for uprobe_unregister() because it's assumed to have
only one reference counter for one uprobe.
[1] https://sourceware.org/systemtap/wiki/UserSpaceProbeImplementation
Note: 'reference counter' is called as 'semaphore' in original Dtrace
(or Systemtap, bcc and even in ELF) documentation and code. But the
term 'semaphore' is misleading in this context. This is just a counter
used to hold number of tracers tracing on a marker. This is not really
used for any synchronization. So we are calling it a 'reference counter'
in kernel / perf code.
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180820044250.11659-2-ravi.bangoria@linux.ibm.com
Reviewed-by: Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@kernel.org>
[Only trace_uprobe.c]
Reviewed-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com>
Tested-by: Song Liu <songliubraving@fb.com>
Signed-off-by: Ravi Bangoria <ravi.bangoria@linux.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt (VMware) <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.