linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 0/7] perf: Add ioctl for PMU driver configuration

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Date:   Mon, 20 Aug 2018 11:03:03 +0100
From:   Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@....com>
To:     Mathieu Poirier <mathieu.poirier@...aro.org>,
        Kim Phillips <kim.phillips@....com>
Cc:     Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo <acme@...nel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Alexander Shishkin <alexander.shishkin@...ux.intel.com>,
        schwidefsky@...ibm.com, heiko.carstens@...ibm.com,
        Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@....com>,
        Jiri Olsa <jolsa@...hat.com>,
        Namhyung Kim <namhyung@...nel.org>,
        Adrian Hunter <adrian.hunter@...el.com>, ast@...nel.org,
        Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, suzuki.poulosi@....com,
        linux-s390@...r.kernel.org,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-arm-kernel <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 0/7] perf: Add ioctl for PMU driver configuration

On 08/16/2018 08:28 PM, Mathieu Poirier wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 at 09:28, Kim Phillips <kim.phillips@....com> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, 15 Aug 2018 10:39:13 +0100
>> Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 01:42:27PM -0600, Mathieu Poirier wrote:
>>>> On Tue, 14 Aug 2018 at 11:09, Kim Phillips <kim.phillips@....com> wrote:
>>>>> The other thing that's going on here is that I'm becoming numb to the
>>>>> loathsome "failed to mmap with 12 (Cannot allocate memory)" being
>>>>> returned no matter what the error is/was. E.g., an error that would
>>>>> indicate a sense of non-implementation would be much better
>>>>> appreciated than presumably what the above is doing, i.e., returning
>>>>> -ENOMEM.  That, backed up with specific details in the form of human
>>>>> readable text in dmesg would be *most* welcome.
>>>>
>>>> As part of the refactoring of the code to support CPU-wide scenarios I
>>>> intend to emit better diagnostic messages from the driver.  Modifying
>>>> rb_alloc_aux() to propagate the error message generated by the
>>>> architecture specific PMUs doesn't look hard either and I _may_ get to
>>>> it as part of this work.
>>>
>>> For the record, I will continue to oppose PMU drivers that dump diagnostics
>>> about user-controlled input into dmesg, but the coresight drivers are yours
>>> so it's up to you and I won't get in the way!
>>
>> That sounds technically self-contradicting to me.  Why shouldn't
>> coresight share the same policies as those used for PMU drivers?  Or
>> why not allow the individual vendor PMU driver authors control the
>> level of user-friendliness of their own drivers?
>>
>> That being said, Matheiu, would you accept patches that make coresight
>> more verbose in dmesg?
> 
> It depends on the issue you're hoping to address.  I'd rather see the
> root cause of the problem fixed than adding temporary code.  Suzuki
> added the ETR perf API and I'm currently working on CPU-wide
> scenarios.  From there and with regards to what can happen in
> setup_aux(), we should have things covered.

I think the main issue is the lack of error code propagation from
setup_aux() back to the perf_aux_output_handle_begin(), which always
return -ENOMEM. If we fix that, we could get better idea of whats
wrong.


If someone is planning to add verbose messages, they may do so by adding
dev_dbg() / pr_debug(), which can be turned on as and when needed.

Suzuki