From: Russell King - ARM Linux <linux@arm.linux.org.uk>
To: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: "Jon Medhurst (Tixy)" <tixy@linaro.org>,
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>,
Rabin Vincent <rabin@rab.in>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] ARM: ftrace: Ensure code modifications are synchronised across all cpus
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 16:45:30 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20121207164530.GX14363@n2100.arm.linux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1354898200.17101.50.camel@gandalf.local.home>
On Fri, Dec 07, 2012 at 11:36:40AM -0500, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Fri, 2012-12-07 at 16:23 +0000, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
>
> > That's fine if there are better ways. If your view is that this would
> > bring things "up to the future" consider this: what you suggest is possible
> > with the standard ARM 32-bit instruction set. With the more modern Thumb
> > instruction set, because we now effectively have prefixes, where those
> > prefixes control the execution of the following instructions, what you
> > suggest becomes no longer possible.
> >
> > So, it's not a question of bringing stuff up to the future at all... you
> > can call it a design regression of you will, but you're really making
> > demands about how CPUs work which are outside of your remit.
> >
> > Think of this a bit like you changing the opcodes immediately following a
> > 'LOCK' prefix on x86. I suspect divorsing the following opcodes from its
> > prefix would be very bad for the instructions atomicity.
>
> But what about the limitations that the function tracer imposes on the
> code that gets modified by stop_machine()?
>
> 1) the original code is simply a call to mcount
>
> 2) on boot up, that call gets converted into a nop
>
> 3) the code that gets changed will only be converting a nop to a call
> into the function tracer, and back again.
>
> IOW, it's a very limited subset of the ARM assembly that gets touched.
> I'm not sure what the op codes are for the above, but I can imagine they
> don't impose the prefixes as you described.
>
> If that's the case, is it still possible to change to the breakpoint
> method?
I have no idea; I've no idea how ftrace works on ARM. That's something
other people use and deal with. Last (and only) time I used the built-in
kernel tracing facilities I ended up giving up with it and going back to
using my sched-clock+record+printk based approaches instead on account
of the kernels built-in tracing being far too heavy.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-12-07 16:48 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 35+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2012-12-06 18:11 [PATCH] ARM: ftrace: Ensure code modifications are synchronised across all cpus Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-06 19:19 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 9:22 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-07 14:03 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 14:55 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-07 15:28 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 15:40 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-07 16:09 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 16:23 ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2012-12-07 16:36 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 16:45 ` Russell King - ARM Linux [this message]
2012-12-07 17:13 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 17:45 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-07 18:06 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 18:17 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 18:18 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-10 10:04 ` Will Deacon
2012-12-10 13:02 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-10 13:33 ` Will Deacon
2012-12-10 13:40 ` Jamie Lokier
2012-12-10 14:56 ` Will Deacon
2012-12-10 13:57 ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2012-12-10 14:06 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-10 14:07 ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2012-12-10 14:46 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-10 15:25 ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2012-12-10 16:31 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-10 16:45 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-07 18:13 ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2012-12-07 18:43 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-07 19:02 ` Will Deacon
2012-12-07 20:01 ` Steven Rostedt
2012-12-10 11:04 ` Jon Medhurst (Tixy)
2012-12-10 11:24 ` Will Deacon
2012-12-10 14:02 ` Steven Rostedt
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