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authorSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>2009-03-12 22:24:17 -0400
committerSteven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>2009-03-12 22:24:17 -0400
commit5cc985488845ec7227a2c5cfd2fd62cf57fb411a (patch)
tree818517eb07b585e981ce81c200294a8ec7a8e992 /kernel/trace
parentf28e55765e40450c127e44d00ae65d0cd1a4efec (diff)
ring-buffer: document reader page design
In a private email conversation I explained how the ring buffer page worked by using silly ASCII art. Ingo suggested that I add that to the comments of the code. Here it is. Requested-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'kernel/trace')
-rw-r--r--kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c68
1 files changed, 68 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
index 2c36be9fac2..58128ad2fde 100644
--- a/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
+++ b/kernel/trace/ring_buffer.c
@@ -22,6 +22,74 @@
#include "trace.h"
/*
+ * The ring buffer is made up of a list of pages. A separate list of pages is
+ * allocated for each CPU. A writer may only write to a buffer that is
+ * associated with the CPU it is currently executing on. A reader may read
+ * from any per cpu buffer.
+ *
+ * The reader is special. For each per cpu buffer, the reader has its own
+ * reader page. When a reader has read the entire reader page, this reader
+ * page is swapped with another page in the ring buffer.
+ *
+ * Now, as long as the writer is off the reader page, the reader can do what
+ * ever it wants with that page. The writer will never write to that page
+ * again (as long as it is out of the ring buffer).
+ *
+ * Here's some silly ASCII art.
+ *
+ * +------+
+ * |reader| RING BUFFER
+ * |page |
+ * +------+ +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * | |-->| |-->| |
+ * +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * ^ |
+ * | |
+ * +---------------+
+ *
+ *
+ * +------+
+ * |reader| RING BUFFER
+ * |page |------------------v
+ * +------+ +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * | |-->| |-->| |
+ * +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * ^ |
+ * | |
+ * +---------------+
+ *
+ *
+ * +------+
+ * |reader| RING BUFFER
+ * |page |------------------v
+ * +------+ +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * ^ | |-->| |-->| |
+ * | +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * | |
+ * | |
+ * +------------------------------+
+ *
+ *
+ * +------+
+ * |buffer| RING BUFFER
+ * |page |------------------v
+ * +------+ +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * ^ | | | |-->| |
+ * | New +---+ +---+ +---+
+ * | Reader------^ |
+ * | page |
+ * +------------------------------+
+ *
+ *
+ * After we make this swap, the reader can hand this page off to the splice
+ * code and be done with it. It can even allocate a new page if it needs to
+ * and swap that into the ring buffer.
+ *
+ * We will be using cmpxchg soon to make all this lockless.
+ *
+ */
+
+/*
* A fast way to enable or disable all ring buffers is to
* call tracing_on or tracing_off. Turning off the ring buffers
* prevents all ring buffers from being recorded to.