Ftrace

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This page contains information about the function tracer utility Ftrace

Contents

Introduction

Ftrace is an internal tracer designed to help out developers and designers of systems to find what is going on inside the kernel. It can be used for debugging or analyzing latencies and performance issues that take place outside of user-space.

Debugfs File Structure

Ftrace uses the debugfs file system to hold the control files as well as the files to display output.

When debugfs is configured into the kernel (which selecting any ftrace option will do) the directory /sys/kernel/debug will be created. To mount this directory, you can add to your /etc/fstab file:

debugfs       /sys/kernel/debug          debugfs defaults        0       0

Or you can mount it at run time with:

mount -t debugfs nodev /sys/kernel/debug

For quicker access to that directory you may want to make a soft link to it:

ln -s /sys/kernel/debug /debug

Any selected ftrace option will also create a directory called tracing within the debugfs. The rest of the document will assume that you are in the ftrace directory (cd /sys/kernel/debug/tracing) and will only concentrate on the files within that directory and not distract from the content with the extended "/sys/kernel/debug/tracing" path name.

Function Trace

This tracer is the function tracer. Enabling the function tracer can be done from the debug file system. Make sure the ftrace_enabled is set; otherwise this tracer is a nop.

 # sysctl kernel.ftrace_enabled=1
 # echo function > current_tracer
 # echo 1 > tracing_enabled
 # usleep 1
 # echo 0 > tracing_enabled
 # cat trace
# tracer: function
#
#           TASK-PID   CPU#    TIMESTAMP  FUNCTION
#              | |      |          |         |
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638713: finish_task_switch <-schedule
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638714: _spin_unlock_irq <-finish_task_switch
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638714: sub_preempt_count <-_spin_unlock_irq
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638715: hrtick_set <-schedule
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638715: _spin_lock_irqsave <-hrtick_set
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638716: add_preempt_count <-_spin_lock_irqsave
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638716: _spin_unlock_irqrestore <-hrtick_set
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638717: sub_preempt_count <-_spin_unlock_irqrestore
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638717: hrtick_clear <-hrtick_set
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638718: sub_preempt_count <-schedule
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638718: sub_preempt_count <-preempt_schedule
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638719: wait_for_completion <-__stop_machine_run
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638719: wait_for_common <-wait_for_completion
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638720: _spin_lock_irq <-wait_for_common
            bash-4003  [00]   123.638720: add_preempt_count <-_spin_lock_irq
[...]

Note: function tracer uses ring buffers to store the above entries. The newest data may overwrite the oldest data. Sometimes using echo to stop the trace is not sufficient because the tracing could have overwritten the data that you wanted to record. For this reason, it is sometimes better to disable tracing directly from a program. This allows you to stop the tracing at the point that you hit the part that you are interested in. To disable the tracing directly from a C program, something like following code snippet can be used:

int trace_fd;
[...]
int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
	[...]
	trace_fd = open(tracing_file("tracing_enabled"), O_WRONLY);
	[...]
	if (condition_hit()) {
		write(trace_fd, "0", 1);
	}
	[...]
}

Interrupts Off Latency Tracing

When interrupts are disabled, the CPU can not react to any other external event (besides NMIs and SMIs). This prevents the timer interrupt from triggering or the mouse interrupt from letting the kernel know of a new mouse event. The result is a latency with the reaction time.

The irqsoff tracer tracks the time for which interrupts are disabled. When a new maximum latency is hit, the tracer saves the trace leading up to that latency point so that every time a new maximum is reached, the old saved trace is discarded and the new trace is saved.

To reset the maximum, echo 0 into tracing_max_latency. Here is an example:

 # echo irqsoff > current_tracer
 # echo 0 > tracing_max_latency
 # echo 1 > tracing_enabled
 # ls -ltr
 [...]
 # echo 0 > tracing_enabled
 # cat latency_trace
# tracer: irqsoff
#
irqsoff latency trace v1.1.5 on 2.6.26
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 latency: 12 us, #3/3, CPU#1 | (M:preempt VP:0, KP:0, SP:0 HP:0 #P:2)
    -----------------
    | task: bash-3730 (uid:0 nice:0 policy:0 rt_prio:0)
    -----------------
 => started at: sys_setpgid
 => ended at:   sys_setpgid

#                _------=> CPU#
#               / _-----=> irqs-off
#              | / _----=> need-resched
#              || / _---=> hardirq/softirq
#              ||| / _--=> preempt-depth
#              |||| /
#              |||||     delay
#  cmd     pid ||||| time  |   caller
#     \   /    |||||   \   |   /
    bash-3730  1d...    0us : _write_lock_irq (sys_setpgid)
    bash-3730  1d..1    1us+: _write_unlock_irq (sys_setpgid)
    bash-3730  1d..2   14us : trace_hardirqs_on (sys_setpgid)

Here we see that that we had a latency of 12 microsecs (which is very good). The _write_lock_irq in sys_setpgid disabled interrupts. The difference between the 12 and the displayed timestamp 14us occurred because the clock was incremented between the time of recording the max latency and the time of recording the function that had that latency.

Note the above example had ftrace_enabled not set. If we set the ftrace_enabled, we get a much larger output:

# tracer: irqsoff
#
irqsoff latency trace v1.1.5 on 2.6.26-rc8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 latency: 50 us, #101/101, CPU#0 | (M:preempt VP:0, KP:0, SP:0 HP:0 #P:2)
    -----------------
    | task: ls-4339 (uid:0 nice:0 policy:0 rt_prio:0)
    -----------------
 => started at: __alloc_pages_internal
 => ended at:   __alloc_pages_internal

#                _------=> CPU#
#               / _-----=> irqs-off
#              | / _----=> need-resched
#              || / _---=> hardirq/softirq
#              ||| / _--=> preempt-depth
#              |||| /
#              |||||     delay
#  cmd     pid ||||| time  |   caller
#     \   /    |||||   \   |   /
      ls-4339  0...1    0us+: get_page_from_freelist (__alloc_pages_internal)
      ls-4339  0d..1    3us : rmqueue_bulk (get_page_from_freelist)
      ls-4339  0d..1    3us : _spin_lock (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..1    4us : add_preempt_count (_spin_lock)
      ls-4339  0d..2    4us : __rmqueue (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..2    5us : __rmqueue_smallest (__rmqueue)
      ls-4339  0d..2    5us : __mod_zone_page_state (__rmqueue_smallest)
      ls-4339  0d..2    6us : __rmqueue (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..2    6us : __rmqueue_smallest (__rmqueue)
      ls-4339  0d..2    7us : __mod_zone_page_state (__rmqueue_smallest)
      ls-4339  0d..2    7us : __rmqueue (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..2    8us : __rmqueue_smallest (__rmqueue)
[...]
      ls-4339  0d..2   46us : __rmqueue_smallest (__rmqueue)
      ls-4339  0d..2   47us : __mod_zone_page_state (__rmqueue_smallest)
      ls-4339  0d..2   47us : __rmqueue (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..2   48us : __rmqueue_smallest (__rmqueue)
      ls-4339  0d..2   48us : __mod_zone_page_state (__rmqueue_smallest)
      ls-4339  0d..2   49us : _spin_unlock (rmqueue_bulk)
      ls-4339  0d..2   49us : sub_preempt_count (_spin_unlock)
      ls-4339  0d..1   50us : get_page_from_freelist (__alloc_pages_internal)
      ls-4339  0d..2   51us : trace_hardirqs_on (__alloc_pages_internal)

Here we traced a 50 microsecond latency. But we also see all the functions that were called during that time. Note that by enabling function tracing, we incur an added overhead. This overhead may extend the latency times. But nevertheless, this trace has provided some very helpful debugging information.


Scheduling Wakeup Latency

In a Real-Time environment it is very important to know the wakeup time it takes for the highest priority task that is woken up to the time that it executes. This is also known as "schedule latency". I stress the point that this is about RT tasks. It is also important to know the scheduling latency of non-RT tasks, but the average schedule latency is better for non-RT tasks. Tools like LatencyTop are more appropriate for such measurements.

Real-Time environments are interested in the worst case latency. That is the longest latency it takes for something to happen, and not the average. We can have a very fast scheduler that may only have a large latency once in a while, but that would not work well with Real-Time tasks. The wakeup tracer was designed to record the worst case wakeups of RT tasks. Non-RT tasks are not recorded because the tracer only records one worst case and tracing non-RT tasks that are unpredictable will overwrite the worst case latency of RT tasks.

Since this tracer only deals with RT tasks, we will run this slightly differently than we did with the previous tracers. Instead of performing an 'ls', we will run 'sleep 1' under 'chrt' which changes the priority of the task.

 # echo wakeup > current_tracer
 # echo 0 > tracing_max_latency
 # echo 1 > tracing_enabled
 # chrt -f 5 sleep 1
 # echo 0 > tracing_enabled
 # cat latency_trace
# tracer: wakeup
#
wakeup latency trace v1.1.5 on 2.6.26-rc8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 latency: 4 us, #2/2, CPU#1 | (M:preempt VP:0, KP:0, SP:0 HP:0 #P:2)
    -----------------
    | task: sleep-4901 (uid:0 nice:0 policy:1 rt_prio:5)
    -----------------

#                _------=> CPU#
#               / _-----=> irqs-off
#              | / _----=> need-resched
#              || / _---=> hardirq/softirq
#              ||| / _--=> preempt-depth
#              |||| /
#              |||||     delay
#  cmd     pid ||||| time  |   caller
#     \   /    |||||   \   |   /
  <idle>-0     1d.h4    0us+: try_to_wake_up (wake_up_process)
  <idle>-0     1d..4    4us : schedule (cpu_idle)

Running this on an idle system, we see that it only took 4 microseconds to perform the task switch. Note, since the trace marker in the schedule is before the actual "switch", we stop the tracing when the recorded task is about to schedule in. This may change if we add a new marker at the end of the scheduler.

Notice that the recorded task is 'sleep' with the PID of 4901 and it has an rt_prio of 5. This priority is user-space priority and not the internal kernel priority. The policy is 1 for SCHED_FIFO and 2 for SCHED_RR.

Doing the same with chrt -r 5 and ftrace_enabled set.

# tracer: wakeup
#
wakeup latency trace v1.1.5 on 2.6.26-rc8
--------------------------------------------------------------------
 latency: 50 us, #60/60, CPU#1 | (M:preempt VP:0, KP:0, SP:0 HP:0 #P:2)
    -----------------
    | task: sleep-4068 (uid:0 nice:0 policy:2 rt_prio:5)
    -----------------

#                _------=> CPU#
#               / _-----=> irqs-off
#              | / _----=> need-resched
#              || / _---=> hardirq/softirq
#              ||| / _--=> preempt-depth
#              |||| /
#              |||||     delay
#  cmd     pid ||||| time  |   caller
#     \   /    |||||   \   |   /
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    0us : try_to_wake_up (wake_up_process)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H4    1us : sub_preempt_count (marker_probe_cb)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    2us : check_preempt_wakeup (try_to_wake_up)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    3us : update_curr (check_preempt_wakeup)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    4us : calc_delta_mine (update_curr)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    5us : __resched_task (check_preempt_wakeup)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    6us : task_wake_up_rt (try_to_wake_up)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H3    7us : _spin_unlock_irqrestore (try_to_wake_up)
[...]
ksoftirq-7     1d.H2   17us : irq_exit (smp_apic_timer_interrupt)
ksoftirq-7     1d.H2   18us : sub_preempt_count (irq_exit)
ksoftirq-7     1d.s3   19us : sub_preempt_count (irq_exit)
ksoftirq-7     1..s2   20us : rcu_process_callbacks (__do_softirq)
[...]
ksoftirq-7     1..s2   26us : __rcu_process_callbacks (rcu_process_callbacks)
ksoftirq-7     1d.s2   27us : _local_bh_enable (__do_softirq)
ksoftirq-7     1d.s2   28us : sub_preempt_count (_local_bh_enable)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.3   29us : sub_preempt_count (ksoftirqd)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.2   30us : _cond_resched (ksoftirqd)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.2   31us : __cond_resched (_cond_resched)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.2   32us : add_preempt_count (__cond_resched)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.2   33us : schedule (__cond_resched)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.2   33us : add_preempt_count (schedule)
ksoftirq-7     1.N.3   34us : hrtick_clear (schedule)
ksoftirq-7     1dN.3   35us : _spin_lock (schedule)
ksoftirq-7     1dN.3   36us : add_preempt_count (_spin_lock)
ksoftirq-7     1d..4   37us : put_prev_task_fair (schedule)
ksoftirq-7     1d..4   38us : update_curr (put_prev_task_fair)
[...]
ksoftirq-7     1d..5   47us : _spin_trylock (tracing_record_cmdline)
ksoftirq-7     1d..5   48us : add_preempt_count (_spin_trylock)
ksoftirq-7     1d..6   49us : _spin_unlock (tracing_record_cmdline)
ksoftirq-7     1d..6   49us : sub_preempt_count (_spin_unlock)
ksoftirq-7     1d..4   50us : schedule (__cond_resched)

The interrupt went off while running ksoftirqd. This task runs at SCHED_OTHER. Why did not we see the 'N' set early? This may be a harmless bug with x86_32 and 4K stacks. On x86_32 with 4K stacks configured, the interrupt and softirq run with their own stack. Some information is held on the top of the task's stack (need_resched and preempt_count are both stored there). The setting of the NEED_RESCHED bit is done directly to the task's stack, but the reading of the NEED_RESCHED is done by looking at the current stack, which in this case is the stack for the hard interrupt. This hides the fact that NEED_RESCHED has been set. We do not see the 'N' until we switch back to the task's assigned stack.

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