Re: [ltt-dev] LTTng 0.87 improved page fault tracing

From: Mathieu Desnoyers
Date: Wed Jan 28 2009 - 23:44:18 EST


* KOSAKI Motohiro (kosaki.motohiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> Hi
>
> interesting..
>
> > I just combined the 4 page fault handler events that were in the tracing
> > hot path of LTTng into 2 :
> >
> > kernel page_fault_entry
> > kernel page_fault_exit
> >
> > They take as parameter the combination of what was available in the
> > trap_entry/exit events and handle_mm_fault entry/exit events. This
> > should lessen the performance impact of the tracer when it's active.
> > I did the related modifications in LTTV 0.12.8.
>
> Just question.
>
> As far as I know, customer has two different requeremtn of the page fault.

1 a)
> (1) collect number of all page fault
> -> if it is too large, too many interrupt decrease performance.
(a single event is required for this)

1 b) the user may also want to know the time spent in the page fault
handler to service those faults, therefore involving page fault
entry and exit events.


> (2) collect number of major page fault
> -> major page fault indicate to increase random access I/O,
> then, some customer want to collect major page fault
> (don't include minor page fault)

Yes, the trace_page_fault_exit takes the "fault" parameter returned by
handle_mm_fault (which is recorded to the trace as the "res" event
field). Using

res & VM_FAULT_MAJOR

will give only the major page faults. Note that some knowledge of the
bitmask is required to interpret the "res" bitfield. This could be done
by a specific analysis module. I would ideally like to create a LTTng
module to export tables including those bitfields so we can keep the
bitfield interpretation in sync with the kernel code changes more or
less automatically.

>
> Is this patch fill (2) requirement?
>

Yes.

Mathieu

>
>

--
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/