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Re: [PATCH] Linux Kernel Markers
- From: Martin Bligh <mbligh at google dot com>
- To: prasanna at in dot ibm dot com
- Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm at osdl dot org>, "Frank Ch. Eigler" <fche at redhat dot com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo at elte dot hu>, Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu dot desnoyers at polymtl dot ca>, Paul Mundt <lethal at linux-sh dot org>, linux-kernel <linux-kernel at vger dot kernel dot org>, Jes Sorensen <jes at sgi dot com>, Tom Zanussi <zanussi at us dot ibm dot com>, Richard J Moore <richardj_moore at uk dot ibm dot com>, Michel Dagenais <michel dot dagenais at polymtl dot ca>, Christoph Hellwig <hch at infradead dot org>, Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh at suse dot de>, Thomas Gleixner <tglx at linutronix dot de>, William Cohen <wcohen at redhat dot com>, ltt-dev at shafik dot org, systemtap at sources dot redhat dot com, Alan Cox <alan at lxorguk dot ukuu dot org dot uk>
- Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 11:02:14 -0700
- Subject: Re: [PATCH] Linux Kernel Markers
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Ah, good point. Though ... how much do we care what the speed of
insertion/removal actually is? If we can tolerate it being slow,
then just sync everyone up in an IPI to freeze them out whilst
doing the insert.
I guess using IPI occasionally would be acceptable. But I think
using IPI for each probes will lots of overhead.
Depends how often you're inserting/removing probes, I guess.
Aren't these being done manually, in which case it really can't
be that many? Still doesn't fix the problem Matieu just pointed
out though. Humpf.
How about we combine all three ideas together ...
1. Load modified copy of the function in question.
2. overwrite the first instruction of the routine with an int3 that
does what you say (atomically)
3. Then overwrite the second instruction with a jump that's faster
4. Now atomically overwrite the int3 with a nop, and let the jump
take over.
That's a good solution.
It's not exactly elegant or simple, but I guess it'd work if we have
to go to that extent. Seems like a lot of complexity though, I'd
rather get rid of the int3 trap if we can.
M.