tracing/events: Documentation updates

- fix some typos
- document the difference between '>' and '>>'
- document the 'enable' toggle
- remove section "Defining an event-enabled tracepoint", since it's
  out-dated and sample/trace_events/ already serves this purpose.

v2: add "Updated by Li Zefan"

[ Impact: make documentation up-to-date ]

Signed-off-by: Li Zefan <lizf@cn.fujitsu.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@gmail.com>
Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
LKML-Reference: <4A125503.5060406@cn.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
This commit is contained in:
Li Zefan 2009-05-19 14:43:15 +08:00 committed by Ingo Molnar
parent 24ed0c4bfc
commit 143c145e3a

View File

@ -1,9 +1,10 @@
Event Tracing
Documentation written by Theodore Ts'o
Updated by Li Zefan
Introduction
============
1. Introduction
===============
Tracepoints (see Documentation/trace/tracepoints.txt) can be used
without creating custom kernel modules to register probe functions
@ -12,30 +13,37 @@ using the event tracing infrastructure.
Not all tracepoints can be traced using the event tracing system;
the kernel developer must provide code snippets which define how the
tracing information is saved into the tracing buffer, and how the
the tracing information should be printed.
tracing information should be printed.
Using Event Tracing
===================
2. Using Event Tracing
======================
2.1 Via the 'set_event' interface
---------------------------------
The events which are available for tracing can be found in the file
/sys/kernel/debug/tracing/available_events.
/debug/tracing/available_events.
To enable a particular event, such as 'sched_wakeup', simply echo it
to /sys/debug/tracing/set_event. For example:
to /debug/tracing/set_event. For example:
# echo sched_wakeup > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_event
# echo sched_wakeup >> /debug/tracing/set_event
[ Note: events can also be enabled/disabled via the 'enabled' toggle
found in the /sys/kernel/tracing/events/ hierarchy of directories. ]
[ Note: '>>' is necessary, otherwise it will firstly disable
all the events. ]
To disable an event, echo the event name to the set_event file prefixed
with an exclamation point:
# echo '!sched_wakeup' >> /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_event
# echo '!sched_wakeup' >> /debug/tracing/set_event
To disable events, echo an empty line to the set_event file:
To disable all events, echo an empty line to the set_event file:
# echo > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_event
# echo > /debug/tracing/set_event
To enable all events, echo '*:*' or '*:' to the set_event file:
# echo *:* > /debug/tracing/set_event
The events are organized into subsystems, such as ext4, irq, sched,
etc., and a full event name looks like this: <subsystem>:<event>. The
@ -44,92 +52,39 @@ file. All of the events in a subsystem can be specified via the syntax
"<subsystem>:*"; for example, to enable all irq events, you can use the
command:
# echo 'irq:*' > /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/set_event
# echo 'irq:*' > /debug/tracing/set_event
Defining an event-enabled tracepoint
------------------------------------
2.2 Via the 'enable' toggle
---------------------------
A kernel developer which wishes to define an event-enabled tracepoint
must declare the tracepoint using TRACE_EVENT instead of DECLARE_TRACE.
This is done via two header files in include/trace. For example, to
event-enable the jbd2 subsystem, we must create two files,
include/trace/jbd2.h and include/trace/jbd2_event_types.h. The
include/trace/jbd2.h file should be included by kernel source files that
will have a tracepoint inserted, and might look like this:
The events available are also listed in /debug/tracing/events/ hierarchy
of directories.
#ifndef _TRACE_JBD2_H
#define _TRACE_JBD2_H
To enable event 'sched_wakeup':
#include <linux/jbd2.h>
#include <linux/tracepoint.h>
# echo 1 > /debug/tracing/events/sched/sched_wakeup/enable
#include <trace/jbd2_event_types.h>
To disable it:
#endif
# echo 0 > /debug/tracing/events/sched/sched_wakeup/enable
In a file that utilizes a jbd2 tracepoint, this header file would be
included. Note that you still have to use DEFINE_TRACE(). So for
example, if fs/jbd2/commit.c planned to use the jbd2_start_commit
tracepoint, it would have the following near the beginning of the file:
To enable all events in sched subsystem:
#include <trace/jbd2.h>
# echo 1 > /debug/tracing/events/sched/enable
DEFINE_TRACE(jbd2_start_commit);
To eanble all events:
Then in the function that would call the tracepoint, it would call the
tracepoint function. (For more information, please see the tracepoint
documentation in Documentation/trace/tracepoints.txt):
# echo 1 > /debug/tracing/events/enable
trace_jbd2_start_commit(journal, commit_transaction);
When reading one of these enable files, there are four results:
The code snippets which allow jbd2_start_commit to be an event-enabled
tracepoint are placed in the file include/trace/jbd2_event_types.h:
0 - all events this file affects are disabled
1 - all events this file affects are enabled
X - there is a mixture of events enabled and disabled
? - this file does not affect any event
/* use <trace/jbd2.h> instead */
#ifndef TRACE_EVENT
# error Do not include this file directly.
# error Unless you know what you are doing.
#endif
3. Defining an event-enabled tracepoint
=======================================
#undef TRACE_SYSTEM
#define TRACE_SYSTEM jbd2
See The example provided in samples/trace_events
#include <linux/jbd2.h>
TRACE_EVENT(jbd2_start_commit,
TP_PROTO(journal_t *journal, transaction_t *commit_transaction),
TP_ARGS(journal, commit_transaction),
TP_STRUCT__entry(
__array( char, devname, BDEVNAME_SIZE+24 )
__field( int, transaction )
),
TP_fast_assign(
memcpy(__entry->devname, journal->j_devname, BDEVNAME_SIZE+24);
__entry->transaction = commit_transaction->t_tid;
),
TP_printk("dev %s transaction %d",
__entry->devname, __entry->transaction)
);
The TP_PROTO and TP_ARGS are unchanged from DECLARE_TRACE. The new
arguments to TRACE_EVENT are TP_STRUCT__entry, TP_fast_assign, and
TP_printk.
TP_STRUCT__entry defines the data structure which will be stored in the
trace buffer. Normally, fields in __entry will be arrays or simple
types. It is possible to place data structures in __entry --- however,
pointers in the data structure can not be trusted, since they will be
accessed sometime later by TP_printk, and if the data structure contains
fields that will not or cannot be used by TP_printk, this will waste
space in the trace buffer. In general, data structures should be
avoided, unless they do only contain non-pointer types and all of the
fields will be used by TP_printk.
TP_fast_assign defines the code snippet which saves information into the
__entry data structure, using the passed-in arguments defined in
TP_PROTO and TP_ARGS.
Finally, TP_printk will print the __entry data structure. At the time
when the code snippet defined by TP_printk is executed, it will not have
access to the TP_ARGS arguments; it can only use the information saved
in the __entry data structure.