Re: [PATCH 00/14] ring-buffer/tracing: Allow ring buffer to have bigger sub buffers

[Steven Rostedt]

On Sun, 10 Dec 2023 09:17:44 -0500
Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 2023-12-09 22:54, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> [...]
> > 
> > Basically, events to the tracing subsystem are limited to just under a
> > PAGE_SIZE, as the ring buffer is split into "sub buffers" of one page
> > size, and an event can not be bigger than a sub buffer. This allows users
> > to change the size of a sub buffer by the order:
> > 
> >    echo 3 > /sys/kernel/tracing/buffer_subbuf_order
> > 
> > Will make each sub buffer a size of 8 pages, allowing events to be almost
> > as big as 8 pages in size (sub buffers do have meta data on them as
> > well, keeping an event from reaching the same size as a sub buffer).  
> 
> Specifying the "order" of subbuffer size as a power of two of
> number of pages is a poor UX choice for a user-facing ABI.
> 
> I would recommend allowing the user to specify the size in bytes, and
> internally bump to size to the next power of 2, with a minimum of
> PAGE_SIZE.

Thanks. I actually agree with you and thought about doing just that, but
decided to not make those changes and send out these patches with the
given API first. I wanted to see if you would comment on this ;-) You did
not disappoint!

I was thinking of keeping the same kind of interface as we have with the
buffer size "buffer_size_kb", and have it be "buffer_subbuf_size_kb", where
you specify the minimum size in kilobytes and it creates it, and the subbuf
may end up being bigger than specified (as that's more a implementation
detail).

Now that you called it out, I will add a patch to convert that as such. But
will keep the current patches in for historical reasons.

-- Steve