diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/trace')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst | 18 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/trace/ring-buffer-design.txt | 2 |
2 files changed, 13 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst b/Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst index d2b5657ed33e..ff658e27d25b 100644 --- a/Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst +++ b/Documentation/trace/ftrace.rst @@ -95,7 +95,8 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: current_tracer: This is used to set or display the current tracer - that is configured. + that is configured. Changing the current tracer clears + the ring buffer content as well as the "snapshot" buffer. available_tracers: @@ -126,7 +127,8 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: This file holds the output of the trace in a human readable format (described below). Note, tracing is temporarily disabled when the file is open for reading. Once all readers - are closed, tracing is re-enabled. + are closed, tracing is re-enabled. Opening this file for + writing with the O_TRUNC flag clears the ring buffer content. trace_pipe: @@ -185,7 +187,8 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: CPU buffer and not total size of all buffers. The trace buffers are allocated in pages (blocks of memory that the kernel uses for allocation, usually 4 KB in size). - If the last page allocated has room for more bytes + A few extra pages may be allocated to accommodate buffer management + meta-data. If the last page allocated has room for more bytes than requested, the rest of the page will be used, making the actual allocation bigger than requested or shown. ( Note, the size may not be a multiple of the page size @@ -235,7 +238,7 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: This interface also allows for commands to be used. See the "Filter commands" section for more details. - As a speed up, since processing strings can't be quite expensive + As a speed up, since processing strings can be quite expensive and requires a check of all functions registered to tracing, instead an index can be written into this file. A number (starting with "1") written will instead select the same corresponding at the line position @@ -382,7 +385,7 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: By default, 128 comms are saved (see "saved_cmdlines" above). To increase or decrease the amount of comms that are cached, echo - in a the number of comms to cache, into this file. + the number of comms to cache into this file. saved_tgids: @@ -490,6 +493,9 @@ of ftrace. Here is a list of some of the key files: # echo global > trace_clock + Setting a clock clears the ring buffer content as well as the + "snapshot" buffer. + trace_marker: This is a very useful file for synchronizing user space @@ -3324,7 +3330,7 @@ directories after it is created. As you can see, the new directory looks similar to the tracing directory itself. In fact, it is very similar, except that the buffer and -events are agnostic from the main director, or from any other +events are agnostic from the main directory, or from any other instances that are created. The files in the new directory work just like the files with the diff --git a/Documentation/trace/ring-buffer-design.txt b/Documentation/trace/ring-buffer-design.txt index ff747b6fa39b..2d53c6f25b91 100644 --- a/Documentation/trace/ring-buffer-design.txt +++ b/Documentation/trace/ring-buffer-design.txt @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ commit_page - a pointer to the page with the last finished non-nested write. cmpxchg - hardware-assisted atomic transaction that performs the following: - A = B iff previous A == C + A = B if previous A == C R = cmpxchg(A, C, B) is saying that we replace A with B if and only if current A is equal to C, and we put the old (current) A into R |