linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 8/9] stacktrace: implement save_stack_trace

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Date:	Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:22:31 +0100
From:	Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@...il.com>
To:	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
Cc:	axboe@...nel.dk, mingo@...hat.com, rostedt@...dmis.org,
	teravest@...gle.com, slavapestov@...gle.com, ctalbott@...gle.com,
	dhsharp@...gle.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	winget@...gle.com, namhyung@...il.com,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 8/9] stacktrace: implement save_stack_trace_quick()

On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 08:38:26AM -0800, Tejun Heo wrote:
> Hello, Frederic.
> 
> On Wed, Jan 11, 2012 at 05:26:44PM +0100, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 10, 2012 at 10:28:25AM -0800, Tejun Heo wrote:
> > > Implement save_stack_trace_quick() which only considers the usual
> > > contexts (ie. thread and irq) and doesn't handle links between
> > > different contexts - if %current is in irq context, only backtrace in
> > > the irq stack is considered.
> > 
> > The thing I don't like is the duplication that involves not only on
> > stack unwinding but also on the safety checks.
> 
> I'm not entirely convinced that this is necessary or we can just add
> more features to the existing backtrace facility (and maybe make that
> more efficient) and be done with it.

Yeah probably we can do that.

> 
> > > This is subset of dump_trace() done in much simpler way.  It's
> > > intended to be used in hot paths where the overhead of dump_trace()
> > > can be too heavy.
> > 
> > Is it? Have you found a measurable impact (outside the fact you record only
> > one stack).
> 
> As I wrote in the head message, I haven't done comparative test yet
> but in the preliminary tests the CPU overhead against memory backed
> device is quite visible (roughly ~20%), so I expect it to matter.
> Note that testing against memory backed device is actually relevant,
> on faster SSDs, CPU is already a bottleneck.
> 
> It would be best if we can extend the existing one to cover all the
> cases with acceptable overhead.  I needed to write this minimal
> version anyway for comparison so it's posted together but no matter
> how it turns out switching them isn't difficult.

Right. So there are two major differences that may affect performances
between save_stack_trace() and save_stack_trace_quick():

- save_stack_trace() does a full walk through the stack, but it rejects
unreliable entries. So to begin with, it should use print_context_stack_bp()
that does a frame pointer walk only (in CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER case).

- It links between stacks. Doing the ->stack() that returns a value should
help in this regard.

- And dump_stack() does various more checks, perhaps we can simplify
it a bit.
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