On Tue, 6 Mar 2018 11:43:58 +0900
Sergey Senozhatsky <sergey.senozhatsky.w...@gmail.com> wrote:
> One more thing
>
> On (03/06/18 10:52), Sergey Senozhatsky wrote:
> [..]
> > > If you know the baud rate, logbuf size * console throughput is actually
> > > trivial to calculate.
>
> It's trivial when your setup is trivial. In a less trivial case if you
> set watchdog threshold based on "logbuf size * console throughput" then
> things are still too bad.
>
> So this is what a typical printk over serial console looks like
>
> printk()
> console_unlock()
> for (;;) {
> local_irq_save()
> call_console_drivers()
> foo_console_write()
> spin_lock_irqsave(&port->lock, flags);
> uart_console_write(port, s, count, foo_console_putchar);
> spin_unlock_irqrestore(&port->lock, flags);
> local_irq_restore()
> }
>
> Notice that call_console_drivers->foo_console_write spins on
> port->lock every time it wants to print out a logbuf line.
> Why does it do this?
>
> In short, because of printf(). Yes, printk() may depend on printf().
>
> printf()
> n_tty_write()
> uart_write()
> uart_port_lock(state, flags) //
> spin_lock_irqsave(&uport->lock, flags)
> memcpy(circ->buf + circ->head, buf, c);
> uart_port_unlock(port, flags) //
> spin_unlock_irqrestore(&port->lock, flags);
>
> Now, printf() messages stored in uart circ buffer must be printed
> to the console. And this is where console's IRQ handler jumps in.
>
> A typical IRQ handler does something like this
>
> static irqreturn_t foo_console_irq_handler(...)
> {
> spin_lock(&port->lock);
> rx_chars(port, status);
> tx_chars(port, status);
> spin_unlock(&port->lock);
> }
>
> Where tx_chars() usually does something like this
>
> while (...) {
> write_char(port, xmit->buf[xmit->tail]);
> xmit->tail = (xmit->tail + 1) & (UART_XMIT_SIZE - 1);
> if (uart_circ_empty(xmit))
> break;
> }
>
> Some drivers flush all pending chars, some drivers limit the number
> of TX chars to some number, e.g. 512.
>
> But in any case, printk() -> call_console_drivers() -> foo_console_write()
> must spin on port->lock as long as foo_console_irq_handler() has chars to
> TX / RX.
>
> Thus, if you have O(logbuf) of kernel messages, and O(circ->buf) of user
> space messages, then printk() will spend O(logbuf) + O(circ->buf) + O(RX).
>
> So the watchdog threshold value based purely on O(logbuf) (printing to
> _all_ of the consoles) will not always work.
>
If you have a complex setup happening like above, you most likely have
printks happening on multiple CPUs which means the work load will be
spread out across those CPUs.
-- Steve
