[patch] perf_event_open.2 clarify the PERF_FLAG_FD_* flags

From: Vince Weaver
Date: Thu Jan 08 2015 - 12:03:50 EST



This change clarifies the behavior of the PERF_FLAG_FD_OUTPUT and
PERF_FLAG_FD_NO_GROUP flags to perf_event_open(), and removes
the related FIXME comments.

While writing tests to validate the behavior of these flags I
discovered that PERF_FLAG_FD_OUTPUT has been broken since the
2.6.35 kernel release.

Signed-off-by: Vince Weaver <vincent.weaver@xxxxxxxxx>

diff --git a/man2/perf_event_open.2 b/man2/perf_event_open.2
index 8bde791..7181c29 100644
--- a/man2/perf_event_open.2
+++ b/man2/perf_event_open.2
@@ -149,14 +149,17 @@ then
.BR execve (2).
.TP
.BR PERF_FLAG_FD_NO_GROUP
-.\" FIXME . The following sentence is unclear
-This flag allows creating an event as part of an event group but
-having no group leader.
-It is unclear why this is useful.
-.\" FIXME . So, why is it useful?
-.TP
-.BR PERF_FLAG_FD_OUTPUT
-This flag reroutes the output from an event to the group leader.
+This flag tells the event to ignore the
+.IR group_fd
+parameter except for the purpose of setting up output redirection
+using the
+.B PERF_FLAG_FD_OUTPUT
+flag.
+.TP
+.BR PERF_FLAG_FD_OUTPUT " (broken since Linux 2.6.35)."
+This flag re-routes the event's sampled output to instead
+be included in the mmap buffer of the event specified by
+.IR group_fd .
.TP
.BR PERF_FLAG_PID_CGROUP " (since Linux 2.6.39)."
This flag activates per-container system-wide monitoring.
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