[PATCH v4 00/15] ring-buffer/tracing: Allow ring buffer to have bigger sub buffers

From: Steven Rostedt
Date: Fri Dec 15 2023 - 12:55:16 EST



[
Nothing changed since v3, just a rebase on trace/core
]

Note, this has been on my todo list since the ring buffer was created back
in 2008.

Tzvetomir last worked on this in 2021 and I need to finally get it in.

His last series was:

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-trace-devel/20211213094825.61876-1-tz.stoyanov@xxxxxxxxx/

With the description of:

Currently the size of one sub buffer page is global for all buffers and
it is hard coded to one system page. The patch set introduces configurable
ring buffer sub page size, per ring buffer. A new user space interface is
introduced, which allows to change the sub page size of the ftrace buffer,
per ftrace instance.

I'm pulling in his patches mostly untouched, except that I had to tweak
a few things to forward port them.

The issues I found I added as the last 7 patches to the series, and then
I added documentation and a selftest, and then changed the UI file
from buffer_subbuf_order to buffer_subbuf_size_kb.

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

[
last patch updates this to:

echo 32 > /sys/kernel/tracing/buffer_subbuf_size_kb

]


Will make each sub buffer a size of 8 pages (32KB), 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).

Changes since v3: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20231213181737.791847466@xxxxxxxxxxx/

- Rebase on trace/core:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace.git/commit/?h=trace/core&id=59c28cc95f0a9f5556561e2416af4ecf86184b71

Changes since v2: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20231213021914.361709558@xxxxxxxxxxx/

- Fixed up the subbuf tests to ignore multiple spaces after before the
'buf' string (same fix as was done for the trace_marker test).

- This time include Cc'ing linux-trace-kernel :-p

Changes since v1: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20231210040448.569462486@xxxxxxxxxxx/

- Add the last patch that changes the ABI from a file called:

buffer_subbuf_order to buffer_subbuf_size_kb

That is, I kept the old interface the same, but then added the last
patch that converts the interface into the one that makes more sense.
I like keeping this in the git history, especially because of the
way the implemantion is.

- I rebased on top of trace/core in the:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/trace/linux-trace.git

- I made the tests a bit more advanced. Still a smoke test, but it
now checks if the string written is the same as the string read.


Steven Rostedt (Google) (10):
ring-buffer: Clear pages on error in ring_buffer_subbuf_order_set() failure
ring-buffer: Do no swap cpu buffers if order is different
ring-buffer: Make sure the spare sub buffer used for reads has same size
tracing: Update snapshot order along with main buffer order
tracing: Stop the tracing while changing the ring buffer subbuf size
ring-buffer: Keep the same size when updating the order
ring-buffer: Just update the subbuffers when changing their allocation order
ring-buffer: Add documentation on the buffer_subbuf_order file
ringbuffer/selftest: Add basic selftest to test changing subbuf order
tracing: Update subbuffer with kilobytes not page order

Tzvetomir Stoyanov (VMware) (5):
ring-buffer: Refactor ring buffer implementation
ring-buffer: Page size per ring buffer
ring-buffer: Add interface for configuring trace sub buffer size
ring-buffer: Set new size of the ring buffer sub page
ring-buffer: Read and write to ring buffers with custom sub buffer size

----
Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst | 21 ++
include/linux/ring_buffer.h | 17 +-
kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c | 409 ++++++++++++++++-----
kernel/trace/ring_buffer_benchmark.c | 10 +-
kernel/trace/trace.c | 155 +++++++-
kernel/trace/trace.h | 1 +
kernel/trace/trace_events.c | 59 ++-
.../test.d/00basic/ringbuffer_subbuf_size.tc | 95 +++++
8 files changed, 647 insertions(+), 120 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/ftrace/test.d/00basic/ringbuffer_subbuf_size.tc