Re: [PATCH] net/mlx5: reduce stack usage in FW tracer

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Mon, Sep 9, 2019 at 11:53 PM Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, 2019-09-09 at 22:18 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

> > To do this right, a better approach may be to just rely on ftrace,
> > storing
> > the (pointer to the) format string and the arguments in the buffer
> > without
> > creating a string. Would that be an option here?
>
> I am not sure how this would work, since the format parameters can
> changes depending on the FW string and the specific traces.

Ah, so the format string comes from the firmware? I didn't look
at the code in enough detail to understand why it's done like this,
only enough to notice that it's rather unusual.

Possibly trace_mlx5_fw might still get away with copying the format
string and the arguments, leaving the snprintf() to the time we read
the buffer, but I don't know enough about ftrace to be sure that
would actually work, and you'd need to duplicate it in
mlx5_devlink_fmsg_fill_trace().

> > A more minimal approach might be to move what is now the on-stack
> > buffer into the mlx5_fw_tracer function. I see that you already store
> > a copy of the string in there from mlx5_fw_tracer_save_trace(),
> > which conveniently also holds a mutex already that protects
> > it from concurrent access.
> >
>
> This sounds plausible.
>
> So for now let's do this or the noinline approach, Please let me know
> which one do you prefer, if it is the mutex protected buffer, i can do
> it myself.
>
> I will open an internal task and discussion then address your valuable
> points in a future submission, since we already in rc8 I don't want to
> take the risk now.

Yes, that sounds like a good plan. If you can't avoid the snprintf
entirely, then the mutex protected buffer should be helpful, and
also avoid a strncpy() along with the stack buffer.

      Arnd