Re: kernelspace -> userspace communication

[Aggelos Economopoulos <aoiko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Monday 04 June 2007, Matthew Dillon wrote:
> :I'd like to move some trivial kernel stats to userspace for further
> :examination. ktr seems ok for small amounts of data gathered in a small
> : time period. Periodically running ktrdump (polling the ktr indexes and
> : using the timestamps to know when you've missed any events) would
> : probably work, but it's a rather dumb solution. Am I missing some other
> : mechanism?
> :
> :Thanks,
> :Aggelos
>
>     KTR is the best way to log realtime data.

Yes, but I only want to log some data on thread exit, I'm just using ktr to 
pass it to userspace because I couldn't find a simpler way.

>     The kernel just maintains a per-cpu memory buffer and operates it like
>     a FIFO, with a revovling read and write index.  There is nothing
>     preventing ktrdump from sticking around and polling the FIFO for
>     new events, then only reporting the new information.

Polling is, well, ugly. In my case it makes no real difference, but in the 
future, it would be nice to have a way to move large amounts of data (for 
profiling, say) to userspace. Maybe a special device interface (that would 
allow blocking) to the ktr buffers or something custom made. Well, if I ever 
have a need for that I'll ask again about what people think.

BTW, do you think moving the tsc-specific bits in kern_ktr.c to platform/ 
would be worthwhile? (I'm not volunteering to do it now, just asking for 
future reference)

>     It would take maybe an hour for a good programmer to modify ktrdump to
>     do that.  It isn't difficult at all.  I eagerly away your patch! :-)

Is this the part where I'm supposed to present a patch and claim "It only took 
me twenty minutes"? :-) Actually, I was looking into modifying ktrdump when I 
stopped ("Wait. ktr wasn't designed for this, there must be a better way") 
and sent the previous mail. I'll try and do it sometime in the next few days.

Aggelos