tree 14ba50cd2a0acb5f18d7c657f08eaa586827fe27
parent bf5e6519b85b3853f2d0bb4f17a4e2eaeffeb574
author Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com> 1226371561 -0500
committer Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com> 1226371657 -0500

ring-buffer: prevent infinite looping on time stamping

Impact: removal of unnecessary looping

The lockless part of the ring buffer allows for reentry into the code
from interrupts. A timestamp is taken, a test is preformed and if it
detects that an interrupt occurred that did tracing, it tries again.

The problem arises if the timestamp code itself causes a trace.
The detection will detect this and loop again. The difference between
this and an interrupt doing tracing, is that this will fail every time,
and cause an infinite loop.

Currently, we test if the loop happens 1000 times, and if so, it will
produce a warning and disable the ring buffer.

The problem with this approach is that it makes it difficult to perform
some types of tracing (tracing the timestamp code itself).

Each trace entry has a delta timestamp from the previous entry.
If a trace entry is reserved but and interrupt occurs and traces before
the previous entry is commited, the delta timestamp for that entry will
be zero. This actually makes sense in terms of tracing, because the
interrupt entry happened before the preempted entry was commited, so
one may consider the two happening at the same time. The order is
still preserved in the buffer.

With this idea, instead of trying to get a new timestamp if an interrupt
made it in between the timestamp and the test, the entry could simply
make the delta zero and continue. This will prevent interrupts or
tracers in the timer code from causing the above loop.

Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <srostedt@redhat.com>